6.2 Psalm 139 and God's Knowledge

Let me skip a little forward in my Science and Scripture writing to the next topic: Quantum Indeterminancy and Free Will. My last post of these breadcrumbs was here. Earlier ones are here.
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6.2 Psalm 139 and God's Knowledge
Psalm 139 is the locus classicus or "classic text" on God's omniscience and omnipresence in Scripture. Here are some of the key verses to that end:

"You know my thought from afar... Before a word is on my tongue, behold Yahweh, you know it all." (139:2, 4)

"To what place might I go away from your spirit? And to where from your face might I flee?" (139:7)

"You formed my inside parts; you wove me in the womb of my mother."  (139:13)

These are perhaps the closest statements in Scripture to a claim that God knows everything. Certainly, if God knows what I am about to say before I say it -- and God knows my very thoughts -- then God's knowledge is thoroughgoing. It would seem that God is everywhere and knows everything there is to know. 

It is worth noting, however, that the Bible is not very explicit about God's omniscience. It would be nice to have a crisp statement. Psalm 147:5 says that God's understanding is without measure, which indicates that God's comprehension of the world is extremely vast indeed. In John 21:17, Peter indicates that Jesus "knows all things" in relation to his heart. 1 John 3:20 says the same thing about God the Father in relation to our hearts. If we take the words out of their context, we might take them to indicate God's omniscience.

It is a reminder that there is at least a distinction between some of the core beliefs we have as Christians and the actual words of Scripture. Belief in the omniscience of God is eminently reasonable and, as we have argued, is a natural inference of ex nihilo creation. But to some degree, it represents a systematization of biblical thinking more than an explicit teaching of Scripture. Perhaps it is the assumption of the New Testament and the later parts of the Old Testament. It is not clear that it was the assumption of the earliest parts of the Old Testament.

2. Psalm 139 is also the clearest biblical statement of the belief that God is everywhere present. In fact, perhaps the psalm implies that God knows everything precisely because he is everywhere present to observe everything. Does he gain knowledge in the psalm in part from what he sees as he observes everything everywhere?

If the psalmist could ascend up to the skies, God would be there (139:8). [1] If he would go to the farthest reaches of the earth, God would be there (139:9). What about the darkness, might I hide myself in the night? No, God sees in the darkness as if it were light (139:11-12). God is everywhere present.

God is also in our past, present, and future. God knew the psalmist when he was still in the womb. The psalm pictures God knitting the psalmist together as his body was being formed in the womb. We can also assume that God was fully aware of those who never made it out of the womb as well. The point is God's thorough knowledge of everything and his presence everywhere.

3. Why does the psalmist say all these things? We begin to get a sense of the purpose of the psalm when we get to verse 19. God knows everything. God is everywhere present. God knows the heart of the psalmist thoroughly. Will not God destroy the wicked? The evil pursue the psalmist, desiring his blood. 

These wicked individuals are not only after the psalmist, but they have rebelled against God himself (139:20). They have risen against God and set themselves against him. These verses suggest that Psalm 139 is ultimately a psalm of individual lament, calling on God to take action against his enemies, who are more significantly God's enemies.

The bottom line is that God knows that the intentions of the psalmist are pure. "Search me, O God. Know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts" (139:23). The psalmist is convinced that God will see that he is God's faithful and fully committed servant. Therefore, his enemies are in the wrong. They are God's enemies too and should be stopped.

4. We are blessed to have this psalm in Scripture, occasioned as it were by the struggles of a leader -- perhaps King David -- in a narrow window of history. Its message reaches far beyond that moment. This relatively short text more than any other place in Scripture proclaims that God is everywhere present and it gives us the most vivid picture of God's thoroughgoing knowledge of everything that goes on in the world. This knowledge extends to our very thoughts.

It does not, however, picture God determining our thoughts or actions. It portrays God as the weaver of the psalmist's inward parts in the womb but it does not extend that level of determinism to the psalmist's daily life. That is to say, it does not picture God dictating everything that happens. For the most part, God's knowledge in the psalm seems a matter of observation and participation rather than orchestration. The psalmist treats the future of his enemies as a matter as yet undecided. Indeed, the psalm aims to influence God's decisions toward them.

[1] A quick reminder that the headings of the psalms were added later. This is a "psalm of David" by heading, but this is later tradition and is not certain. Additionally, the New Testament never quotes the psalm. We cannot confirm that the psalmist was a "he," but it is by far the most likely option. 

Notes Along the Way: Ten Years of Terror

Some more notes on my life. This content would come after the two posts on God's callings.
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1. In the first chapter, I talked about how my "conscience" suddenly awakened one afternoon at a winter camp meeting in Brookville, Florida when I was 10 years old. What ensued was ten years of terror.

During those years, I prayed constantly for the Lord to forgive my sins. Frankly, I didn't know what sins I was even asking forgiveness for. Sometimes I thought it might be nice if I had deliberately done something wrong. Then I would know what I was praying for and would likely have found peace. 

But there were few moments of peace in my quest to be saved. A couple times. And when I wasn't thinking about it. But if I got to navel gazing -- hyperintrospection -- it was torment.

2. Keith Drury once said there wasn't a moment of his life that he wouldn't have gone to heaven if he had died. As a young child, he had not reached a point of accountability, and the Lord would have received him. As soon as he knew his need for salvation, he prayed to receive it, His sins were forgiven, he became right with God. Every time thereafter, whenever he sinned, he asked forgiveness. As a consequence, there was never a moment that the Lord would not have received him.

What a healthy understanding of God's character! It was not the feel of the preaching of my youth. I grew up with a doctrine of eternal insecurity. Not only did hell loom over you before you came to Christ, but it was "one sin you're out" after you came to Christ. Say a curse word and get hit by a train? It's hell for you. This is just as unbiblical as eternal security.

3. I had always been a compliant person. At school, I was a goody-two shoes. If it was a rule, I followed it. The number of times I had deliberately disobeyed were few. I took a brick home from Hobe Sound. I asked if I could go to 7-Eleven but went to a different one than I knew my mother would think. I didn't correct the lady when she thought I had deliberately given the wrong answer. That's most of the childhood sins I can remember.

I was painfully shy. Perhaps I had sinned because I prayed in the pew rather than going down to the altar. At Frankfort Camp, I might go down to the second or third pew after the altar call was over. Maybe God was testing me to see if I was willing to go to the altar. I did once. 

Again, I didn't know what sin I needed to go to the altar for except that I was constantly unsure if I was saved. 

They sang a song. "It was on a Sunday, somebody touched me." You were supposed to stand. At first I didn't know if I was saved. I stood on Sunday because I didn't want people to think I wasn't saved. Was that lying? I had already asked Jesus into my heart a thousand times. What if I had the wrong day of the week? Thankfully someone added a verse, "I don't know what day it was but somebody touched me." 

Then there was that time going up the stairs I had peace after praying the prayer for the ten thousandth time. I would count that time. I think it was on a Sunday, so I could stand on that stanza the next camp meeting. 

4. Do I think the Lord was testing or tricking me? No. What a petty god would play such games!

If God is love, he wouldn't want someone so desperate to languish on like that in torment. That would be cruel God -- in fact, more likely Satan. I attribute most of my torture to a developing brain and whatever peculiarities there might be to mine. I was born to second guess myself.

Surely the almighty, sovereign God of the whole universe has better things to do than torture overly conscientious twelve year olds.

It's probably no surprise that I'm not too fond of this dimension of revival culture. It hyped up experiences. You got the impression that the Christian walk was fully of these emotional encounters with God.

But I was more like Spock in temperament. I had deep emotions but I tried to suppress them. Be logical. To this day, I feel like I've exposed myself if I let my emotions show. I feel guilty if I get stirred up in a meeting.

John Maxwell used to make us feel guilty for not witnessing to every passing stranger we encountered. I used to keep a Bible out when I was on a plane so that someone could ask me about it -- a subtle attempt to open the door to evangelism mid-flight. In high school, there was a phase where I would put a Bible on my desk as a witness.

But I would later recognize that Maxwell is an extrovert's extrovert. He can talk to anyone at anytime. It's no virtue to do what you're wired to do. Virtue is when you do good when you're not wired to do it.

A extroverted woman in my home church once told me when I was a teen that shyness was a matter of pride -- a person is too proud to put themselves out there, I guess. What a completely stupid thing to think.

5. I don't know why God didn't make himself more evident to me all that time. This is a question that would haunt me into my late twenties. You would think that God would want to be known -- especially to someone so constantly pleading for him to speak to him. Even in seminary, many Sunday mornings in church I would silently plead for him to speak to me in an obvious way.

When I was in England, I read Honest to God by Bishop John A. T. Robinson. He talked about how when he was at theological college, a certain group of students seemed to be constantly blessed, but he didn't feel anything. Man, I identified with that. Why is it that some people seem to have their radios tuned exactly to the divine frequency while others struggle to hear a peep?

I remember a young man at my home church growing up. He seemed to go to the altar every Sunday night. But for whatever reason, he just never seemed to find peace. I don't know, of course, whether he was struggling with some very specific issue.

I have since come to believe that some people have a gift in this area. Call it a gift of faith. They are on the right frequency to perceive God's working. 

Can we all get on that frequency? I've come to think that we can. It's taken me a very long time to think that. I'm not sure how to put it, I think it comes from the assumption that our prayers reach God whether we hear anything back or not. In fact, I suspect for most of us, we won't experience any undeniable response most of the time. 

I almost chuckle when I think of a moment in college when it occurred to me that I should imagine that God is actually there when I pray -- that I am actually talking to someone. I had just suddenly come to realize that my prayers were like monologuing. It was like I was talking to myself.

While this sounds ridiculous, how many prayers had I heard that were really the pastor talking to the congregation. "Lord we know that you are in control." Of course, God knows that. You don't have to tell him. Are you really telling the congregation that?

In many respects, I wonder if my revivalist tradition had set me up for this crisis. I had been led to believe that everyone was a Moses. We were all prophets and prophetesses. The impression I got was that I should be having regular highly emotional zaps and revelations from God.  We were all Elijahs. If those zaps weren't happening, something was wrong.

Then I realized that Moses was eighty years old before he had his first real contact with God. Sure, the encounters came very frequently after that. But I'm not even sixty. 

6. In seminary, I had David Seamands for Pastoral Care and Counseling. In that class, we read his Healing for Damaged Emotions (hate that title). More helpful to me personally was going on to read his Healing for Damaged Memories. 

Although his labels are truly cringeworthy, he talks in that second book about "damaged love receptors." He argues that sometimes our God antennae aren't functioning properly. God is beaming his love to us just fine, but because our antennae are broken, we're not receiving the transmission. And -- here was the hard part for me -- he said God uses relationships and others to help fix our antennae.

As an introvert, I hated that thought. Why can't you just fix me directly, God? I know you can. But Seamands suggested that God just didn't design us that way. He designed us to live -- and heal -- in community.

7. Compounding the torment, as I mentioned in the first chapter, was the fact that I started to experience it at exactly the time that the rapture movies came out. We watched A Thief in the Night one Sunday night at church. Then we watched A Distant Thunder when it followed. Perhaps there was some connection between these movies and my terror. To this day, apocalyptic movies get in my head. Woe that my family got into watching Walking Dead. I started seeing zombies all over Marion.

At K-Mart, I would keep my mother close in sight. I wouldn't stay outside playing too long before going in to make sure she was still here. I clearly had no confidence in my own salvation.

At college, it got worse. I'm sure the girl I was dating thought I was nuts. We would come home from church and I would say, "I need to go pray. I'm not sure if I'm a Christian." I remember one Sunday going round and round the student center at lunchtime asking God for forgiveness for sins I know not what. I don't think it was God. I think it was neurosis of some kind.

One Sunday night, I was struggling again. Somehow I ended up in the lobby of the girl's dorm. Some movie was on. As movies and television always do, it pulled my mind into its story world. When it was over, I felt better.

That was a good insight. Left alone to my own thoughts, I would spiral. If I could be around people, if I could watch something that would pull me out of my own storyline and into another one, it was a kind of reset.

8. I would largely outgrow this bondage, which is part of why I think most of it was developmental. Perhaps it was also a faulty God-concept that I grew up hearing preached. The God of my childhood was a crooked sherrif who enjoyed having an excuse to blow people away. At least that's the way I experienced him. 

To this day, I think there are many sons and daughters of the holiness movement who have a distorted sense of God. I think this is why they are attracted to authoritarian personalities. Punishing the wrongdoer is their primary mode of being. But this is a twisted sense of God. They are drawn more to God frying Uzzah than to God as the one who sent his Son to save rather than condemn the world. 

I will share in the next chapter about the Easter experience that was a definitive turning point in my spiritual walk. Then I would go to seminary, which was pure joy and light and freedom in the Lord. During those next few years I would steadily move from bondage to freedom. 

Please understand that I loved my home and family. But those years in seminary were a spiritual tug of war inside. When I would go to seminary, I would feel genuine freedom in the Lord. It was not a selfish freedom or a rebellious freedom. It was pure joy in the Lord. It was peace and happiness. It was light.

Then I would go home. I would begin to doubt myself again. I would question whether I was going off track even though it felt like my mind was exploding with new insight. I would doubt myself. 

But at seminary, the Scriptures were opening up to me in a way they never had before. I was blown away. I was reading them in the original Greek and Hebrew and entering its worlds like never before. I was beginning to feel the love of the Lord.

Then I would go home, and a darkness would cover the land again, a bondage. It would take a day or two when I returned to seminary. Then it was joy again. But home was darkness.

You can't live in those two worlds forever. Eventually, I would choose the joy of the Lord. I was on a path toward confidence. I would reach a point where I was fully confident in the Lord -- I never worried about what he thought of me anymore. I was not troubled anymore by the doubts that had once enslaved me.

I continued to worry about what other people thought of me. I didn't want to disappoint others. Until my early thirties I pretty much did what everyone else wanted me to do (within reason). In teaching, I worried what others might think. In class, the imaginary presence of my mother sat in the back of the room as an alarm for when I might say something off limits.

I wasn't worried at all about what God thought. He understood all my new understandings. He and I were fine. It was everyone else out there I worried about.

9. Let me be really serious right now. I believe that a significant portion of the evangelical church has never moved out of the bondage to law that I am speaking of. Still living under the God whose primary mode is to destroy, they know neither the true love nor joy of the Lord. A believer in this land is putty in the hands of the Devil. They are not only unaware of their own bondage, but they are an easy instrument of bondage to others.

Lord, lead us out of Egypt to the Promised Land.

10. God's speaking is still a mystery to me. If you are open, you can see his hand everywhere. You can rarely be completly sure of exactly what he is up to. But you can thank him for every good thing that happens. You can rejoice even through the bad times.

As a Wesleyan, I don't think that everything happens for a reason. Well, I believe God either causes or allows everything for a reason. It's the "allow" part that gets a little uncertain. Sometimes, God allows things for reasons much bigger than Ken Schenck, which may mean that he has not directed them for some very Ken-focused reason.

The "everything happens for a reason" way of thinking can get very narcissistic, as if God is trying to teach me something very specific with everything that happens. But the universe is a big place and, most of the time, God is frying much bigger fish than me.

But I can be constantly in prayer. I can be constantly in communication with God. I can be constantly thankful in both good and bad times. "Naked I came into the world, and naked shall I leave." Life gives, and life takes a way. "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

Still, I should pray in confidence that my prayers do affect the outcome of events. And if at some point I sense the Lord speaking to me, fantastic! I must always be listening.

Romans' Story: 1:1-15 -- the letter opening

Lead up to Romans
Romans 16 -- Paul's letter to Ephesus
Romans 15:14-33 -- situation of Romans
Romans 1:16-17 -- the point of the letter
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Paul, a servant of Messiah Jesus, called to be an apostle, having been set apart for the good news of God.

1. "I like it," Tertius said. "Most letters don't expand on who the sender is like that, but it's become your style, hasn't it?"

"Yes," Paul said. "It started as some reminders. For example, in one of the longer letters I sent here to Corinth, I wanted to remind you all that I was indeed an apostle. Then in my letter to the Galatian churches, I went really long, reminding them that my apostleship comes from God."

"So how long are we going to go as we expand on you as sender in this letter to the Romans?" Tertius asked.

"Let's remind them who Jesus is," Paul answered.

Paul's apostleship wasn't universally recognized. There were plenty of people in the Jerusalem churches who thought he was a false prophet. In fact, one of the reasons he felt led to write Romans was to head off any false rumors about him that might be in the water.

For example, his opponents were saying that he was telling Jews to stop keeping the Law of Moses. Because he was arguing that a right standing didn't come from keeping the Law, they said he was against the Law period. They said he taught, "Let's do evil so good may come."

It was definitely something he wanted to address in the letter. He was not in favor of sinning. He had not rejected the Law. Rather, like any good rabbi worth a shekel, he was arguing that it was the heart of the Law -- loving your neighbor -- that was the focus. And it was possible to do through the power of the Holy Spirit!

2. An apostle was someone who was sent. In the Christian context, it was especially someone who was sent as a witness to the resurrection. Jesus had appeared to numerous people after his resurrection. Paul was the last -- the last of the apostles.

The resurrection was good news -- it was a gospel. Jesus had preached the good news that the kingdom of God was soon coming to earth as it was in heaven. But his disciples had not yet understood that he needed to die for the sins of Israel and then rise from the dead. This was the great insight, the great revelation. Jesus' resurrection from the dead was in fact his enthronement as king. He rose from the dead and sat at the right hand of God in the skies.

After the resurrection, it had been obvious after the believers began searching the Scriptures. The Holy Spirit had helped them to see that all these things were part of God's plan. This was the good news that Isaiah and the other prophets had foreseen.

3. It is a gospel concerning his Son, who came from the seed of David according to the flesh and set apart as Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness from the resurrection of the dead: Jesus, Messiah, our Lord.

"That's magnificent," Tertius said.

"It comes from some of the hymn writing we did at Ephesus," Paul said. "There were some really inspired poets in the church there. This one captures nicely the two-fold nature of Jesus as Messiah."

Everyone knew that the Anointed One needed to be a descendent of King David. What the Holy Spirit had revealed is that the resurrection was Jesus' enthronement as Lord. It was right there in Psalm 110 -- the LORD had installed Jesus as Lord of the cosmos at his right hand.

Son of God was a royal title, after all. It was right there in Psalm 2, where God installs the king as his Son -- "Today, I have given you birth," they used to say when someone was installed as king.

4. "Now let's make the connection to the Gentiles," Paul said. "Most of the churches of Rome are made up of non-Jews."

"Really?" Tertius responded. "That's really interesting since Jesus is the Messiah of Israel."

"Yes, we'll want to address that enigma strongly in this letter," Paul said. "It is a mystery that, while Jesus is the Anointed One of Israel, more non-Jews are believing than Jews."

"But there are special reasons why the Roman churches are primarily Gentile," Paul continued. "Claudius ordered most of the Jewish believers in Jesus to leave Rome a few years ago. (To be honest, it seems like a lifetime ago, but it was only about seven years ago.) So, the church that was left was predominantly non-Jewish, although now that Claudius is gone, Jewish believers have been returning more and more."

... through whom we have received grace and apostleship leading to the Gentiles having faith and then obeying God's call.

"I want to emphasize to them that I am God's special envoy to non-Jews. That makes me their apostle on behalf of the name of Jesus.

5. "That's a pretty long expansion about you as the sender," Tertius said with a smile. "Can we say who we're writing to?"

"Sure," Paul answered.

... to those who are at Rome.

"Let's expand about them too," Paul said.

"Really?"

... beloved of God, called to be holy.

"And now your signature greeting?" Tertius asked.

"Go for it."

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Nice," Tertius said. "Captures the Hebrew shalom, adds something like the Greek hello, captures both God the Father as the source of grace and Jesus as our Lord, God's viceroy, his appointed king at his right hand."

6. "Time for the thanksgiving section," Tertius continued. "What shall we thank God for about them?"

"Well," Paul said, "everyone has heard about their faith. I also want them to know that I pray regularly for them, even though I've never been there. 

"Probably most important," Paul continued. "I want them to know that I have been wanting to visit them for a long time. It's just that circumstances -- and probably the Devil as well -- have prevented me."

"What's in it for them?" Tertius asked. 

"I think we will both mutually benefit," Paul said. "They have spiritual gifts that can minister to me, and my faith can minister to them too."

"But most of all," Paul continued, "I want them to know that it is my charge from God as apostle to the Gentiles to proclaim the gospel to them as Gentiles. I've preached to Gentiles all over the eastern part of the Roman Empire. I am a debtor to both Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and the foolish."

"And now it's their turn," Tertius said.

"Yes. Now it's their turn." 

A Theology of Women in Ministry

Here are some thoughts on a theology of women in ministry. Note that I am bracketing discussions of husband-headship, which biblically are tangential to this question.
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I. All Christians are called.

• “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called with one hope of your calling” (Eph. 4:4).
• "Those he pre-arranged for resurrection, he also called. Those he called, he also made right with him. Those he justified, he also will glorify" (Rom. 8:30).

II. All Christians have gifts to use.

• “We have different gifts according to the grace that was given to us” … prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, showing mercy… (Rom. 12:6-8).
• 1 Pet. 4:10

III. All Christians are ministers.

• Leaders “equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-12).
• We are all salt and light. We are all evangelists. We all exercise our gifts.

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Now some theological groundwork.

IV. A "Pentecostal" Theology of the Spirit

• “Your sons and daughters will prophesy” (Acts 2:17). 
• “There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is not ‘male and female,’ for you are all one in Christ” (Gal. 3:28). The verse is about who can be saved and be members of the people of God, yes. But it also relates to the spiritual realm in general (e.g., Acts 10:34-35).

V. The Arc of Scripture

• Genesis 1 shows Adam and Eve to be equally in the image of God, equally called to rule and tend the world.
• Genesis 2 shows Adam and Eve as co-laborers in the Garden.
• Genesis 3:16 describes the consequences of the Fall -- conflict within the family, domination by the husband.
• Christ redeems all the sins of humanity, including the sins of Eve.
• In the kingdom, women are not "given" in marriage (Mark 12:25). They are full equals. This is the trajectory of the kingdom.

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VI. Some women are called to a focused ministry -- for which there are no limitations.

• Phoebe is a deacon (Rom. 16:1).
• Priscilla teaches and disciples men (Acts 18:26).
• The daughters of Philip are prophets (Acts 21:9).
• We should assume that Priscilla (Rom. 16:3-5), Lydia (Acts 16:40), and Nympha (Col. 4:15) are elders in their own house churches.
• Junia was an apostle (Rom. 16:7).

Appendix: The Clobber Verses 

• 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 has to be about disruptive speech, not spiritual speech, because the core issue in 1 Corinthians 11 is the fact that women pray and prophesy in worship.
• 1 Timothy 2:12-15 is about the husband wife relationship, so is irrelevant to the question of women in ministry. It's a distraction. 

Pensée 5.3: There are two core principles of governance.

Thus far, I have suggested that anarchy and communism are unworkable social forms. Similarly, I have argued that monarchies and supposed theocracies are unreliable. What then are the optimal forms of governance? Before we get there, let's lay down the guide rules.

1. There are two core goals of governance. The primary one is to protect the "rights" of each individual. (I use the word rights loosely because we do not as yet have a basis for assigning them.) We need certain "guidelines" in place for us to live among each other in peace.

The second core goal of governance is to facilitate the greatest good for the greatest number. This is of course utilitarianism. Utilitarianism alone will not lead to maximal thriving, but it is a huge first step. 

For example, it might lead to a greater total happiness to eliminate a particular group of people who are strongly disliked by the majority. But that course of action is disallowed by the guidelines. (In the United States, those guidelines are chiefly found in the Bill of Rights.)

When we put these two principles together as a framework, we have a strong foundation for a society that has the potential to thrive maximally and approach some kind of maximal happiness (eudaimonia) in terms of its structures.  

2. How can we support these two core principles? It is difficult in the absence of some grounding assumptions. For example, as a Christian, I can invoke the theological claim that all humans are created in the image of God and are thus intrinsically valuable. Every human being -- no matter how vile -- has a fundamental dignity that must be maintained even in judgment. "Rights" are thus "endowed by their Creator," as the Declaration of Independence states.

So, from a Christian standpoint, the fundamental value of each human being is something to protect. And if the fundamental ethic is to love one another, then a society that maximizes good for everyone is simply the love principle played out on a societal level.

Is there a grounding principle that might be used in the absence of religious assumptions? Probably the most likely one is the notion of a social contract. A group of people come to an agreement on the basis of mutual advantage. In terms of "rights," I recognize that it is to my advantage to agree not to kill you if you will agree not to kill me. In some specific situation, it might be to your advantage to eliminate me. But before that situation can arise, we both agree not to kill each other.

We thus grant each other rights. They are assigned for our mutual advantage. Then this mutual advantage is extrapolated to the whole system on a societal level.

Certainly, we'll need some way to guarantee this agreement. We create a police force of some sort to make sure we both keep the rules. We create consequences for violation of the contract.

On a societal level, I stand a better chance of thriving if the rules are set up to maximize the thriving of the whole society. True, there will always be those who have a particular set of skills and circumstances that would allow them to succeed on the backs of others. But since I do not know if I will be one of those individuals, I commit to rules that aim at the thriving of as many as possible and rules that keep the conniving from exploiting others.

When I am healthy, when I am prospering, it is easy for me to vote against resources being used for those who are not. But I do not know when I will get sick. I do not know when the tide may turn against me in some way. So, I commit to rules that have a safety net of some kind for those who, for whatever reason, fall off the majority path. It could happen to me.

3. Let me note that selfish human nature will constantly balk at this system. The ideal system aims at the greatest good for the greatest number. But we are wired to seek the greatest pleasure for me (egoism). In any one situation, it may be to my personal advantage to break the rules of society in general.

That is why we have rules enforced by a justice system -- to keep you (and me) from breaking the rules such that the rest of us are harmed.

Humanity is also a herd animal. When we are not trying to break the rules to our individual advantage, we will try to skew the rules to advantage our group, whatever it might be. Again, that is why we have a justice system, to keep individuals and groups from breaking the rules.

4. The rules are kept in two places. First, there is the Constitution. This is the core set of principles that lay down the social contract. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution sets out our social contract in its simplest terms:

We the people in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.

What follows thereafter is a framework that was intended to accomplish the ideals of the American founding. Key to the passage of the Constitution was a Bill of Rights, without which it would not have been ratified.

If the full embodiment of the two core values was not fully in place with the initial version of the Constitution, it would be worked out in the years that followed. In particular, the Civil War resulted in some core modifications to the vision of America. This more complete version was less skewed toward the privileged but was "of the people, by the people, for the people," as Lincoln put it. 

A great society is not one in which a select few prosper but one in which as many people as possible prosper. Building on the core principles, it is better for a large number of people to prosper to some degree than for a small number to prosper fantastically. But it is not a zero sum game. One person's prosperity does not automatically imply that someone else is not prospering. We can all prosper together. More on this concept when we get to economic philosophy.

The details of the Constitution have long been a work in progress. "Strict constructionists" often portray themselves as noble and slander others as "legislating from the bench." However, historically, this has usually been a struggle between judges who are trying to play out the fundamental principles of the social contract versus those who want to restrict the rights of some group against its spirit. 

In other words, strict constructionism is almost always used in order to constrain some group from its potentially assigned "rights" under the social contract. Historically, we are speaking of slaves, freed blacks, women, gay individuals, etc. The letter of the law has often allowed the majority to restrict such individuals from full participation in society. More often than not, those who are called "judicial activists," have actually been trying to extend the fundamental rights of the Constitution in a more thoroughgoing way. Certainly, we can debate the details.

5. If the Constitution sets the large guidelines for the social contract, the varied laws of the land are meant to play out that contract into the local and daily lives of its participants, which is everyone who lives here. As John Locke put it, if you stay here, you are giving "tacit consent" to the laws of the land.

I personally think that maximal happiness generally correlates to maximum freedom, as long as my freedom does not unreasonably impinge on your freedoms and "rights." As Jefferson put it, "That government governs best that governs least." However, the modern world is a complex place, and there are very different people and countless factors here. What that means is that government will inevitably be large and complex. 

Nevertheless, the goal of maximal libertarian freedom remains. 

4.3 The Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2

This continues an exploration of Genesis 1. Previous posts:

4.1 Differing Views of Genesis 1
4.2 The Genre of Genesis 1 

Now 4.3 The Interpretation of Genesis 1:1-2
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4.3.1 Taking Off Our Glasses
Now we get to the verses themselves. At first glance, they may seem simple enough:

In the beginning, God created the skies and the land. But the land was formless and useless, and darkness was on the face of the deep. And a wind from God was blowing over the face of the waters.

There are several opportunities in these verses for us to read modern assumptions into them, including modern Christian assumptions. But if we want to hear them as their first audiences did, we will have to take off our modern glasses and try to get into the ancient Israelite view of the world.

For example, most Bibles read, “God created the heavens and the earth.” It is natural that most readers probably picture a sphere like our contemporary view of the earth. When we hear the word heavens, we may not think of the skies but of the universe or even of the place where God and the angels are located.

We thus have to adjust our thinking to realize that Hebrew did not have a separate word for “sky” and “heaven” as a place where God is. I have translated with the word sky to remind us that the ancient Israelites had a far, far smaller sense of the world than we do today. The word shamayim for “skies” was simply that which is above us.

The word for “sky” in Hebrew is “dual,” which means that it refers to two things. In English, we have singular for one thing (e.g., a book) and plural for multiple things (e.g., books – we often add an s to the end to do this). Hebrew had another number it could use for its nouns, although rarely used. The “dual” in Hebrew referred to two things. For example, because Egypt was divided into Upper and Lower Egypt, the word for Egypt in Hebrew is always dual (mitzrayim).

The fact that Hebrew thinks of the sky as dual probably reflects the view of the sky we hear about later in Genesis 1. God divides the waters from the waters and puts a space, a dome, a “firmament” in between them (Gen. 1:6-8). There are thus two parts to the sky – the upper part and the lower part. Perhaps for the same reason, the word for “water” in Hebrew is also typically dual (mayim – notice how similarly the word for sky and water are in Hebrew).

Similarly, they did not yet think of the earth as a sphere in the times of ancient Israel. “Land” is a better translation if we want to picture what they would have pictured when they heard the Hebrew word ‘arets. We will see dry land appear in Genesis 1:9. This is not a globe but the relatively flat earth that emerges as you come ashore from an ocean or a lake.

A “wind from God” is another phrase where we as Christians might immediately think of the Holy Spirit if we read a translation that has “the spirit of God” here. It is probably not wrong theologically to hear overtones of the Holy Spirit. That is to say, we can apply the verse that way as Christians. But in terms of the original meaning of the verse, it is anachronistic. Ancient Jews did not yet have as developed a sense of God’s Spirit as the New Testament has – or frankly later Christian theology. The Old Testament does have a sense of God’s spirit (e.g., Psalm 139:7), but it is not yet used in a personal way.

The New Revised Standard Version is an example of a version that translates this part of 1:2 with “a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” [27] They translate it this way because other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation stories talk about a violent wind from one god blowing against a water goddess (e.g., the Enuma Elish). [28] It is a reminder that the word ru’ah in Hebrew could mean things like breath and wind. In other words, using the word spirit easily can lead us to read many concepts into the verse that were not there originally.

These are just some of the ways that our assumptions can easily lead us to see Genesis 1:1-2 as a mirror of what we already believe. To hear what these verses actually meant, we have to take off our cultural glasses and put on Ancient Near Eastern Israelite/Jewish glasses. [29] Only then will we begin to hear the words in terms of how their first audiences heard them.

4.3.2 The Function of Genesis 1:1
Should we see Genesis 1:1 as an overview of the whole chapter? Or is it the first moment in the sequence of creation – Day 0, if you would?

On the one hand, some see Genesis 1:1 as God getting his raw materials ready. He creates the materials he is going to use in creation in 1:1 -- the skies and the earth. Then in 1:3 he begins to cook with the ingredients and organize them. 

You might remember the gap theory. God creates an orderly universe in verse 1. But then Satan fell and everything became chaos in verse 2. In the gap theory, God then begins to re-create the world in verse 3. This would be one version of an interpretation that sees Genesis 1:1 as the creation before the creation, if you would. A whole sequence of creation and recreation has taken place before verse 3.

There is little contextual evidence for this gap theory. That is to say, if this is what Genesis 1:1-2 was saying, the verses do not leave us many clues. Isaiah 45:18 may very well allude to Genesis 1:2 when it says that God did not create (bara') the earth to be chaos (tohu). [30] However, the verse most likely refers to the direction and end result of creation rather than its initial state. It is saying that God never intended for the cosmos to end up as chaos. Rather, God created order out of chaos.

John Walton sees Genesis 1:1 as the heading of 1:1-2:3, an introduction to the rest of the chapter. In this way, it functions much like the statements "These are the generations of..." that start eleven later sections of Genesis (e.g., 2:4). [31] He proposes that it is far more likely that the author of Genesis had twelve of these sections -- with Genesis 1:1 starting the series off -- than that there were only eleven of them. Twelve is a special number in Genesis, the number of the sons of Jacob and thus the tribes of Israel.

Another argument for Genesis 1:1 as an overview of the whole chapter comes from the way 2:1 seems to close this introduction. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created" at the beginning of the chapter. Then 2:1 says, "The skies and the land were finished" at the end. This kind of literary structure is called an "inclusio," where a block of text is put in a kind of parenthesis by similar words at its beginning and end. Here are the similar words: "At the beginning, God created the skies and the land... [read on and I'll tell you how]." Then we have "And the skies and the land were finished" at the end when the creating is done. 

On the whole, then, Genesis 1:1 does not seem to be the creation before the creation. It does not seem to be Day 0 or the creation of the matter that God will then mould in the rest of the chapter. Rather, it seems to be a general statement of the whole chapter. What is Genesis 1 about? Genesis 1 is about God creating the skies and the land. Keep reading and you will find out how he did it.

4.3.3 Creation Out of Nothing?
If Genesis 1:1 is an overview, then we face another question. Where did the waters of Genesis 1:2 come from? Genesis 1:1 already does not mention the waters. If it were the creation of material before the creation, one might suppose that the creation of the waters was implied in it. But if Genesis 1:1 is an overview of the chapter, then the chaotic waters of 1:2 are never created.

Given all the other ancient creation stories, it would not be surprising. All the creation stories of the Ancient Near East begin with water. In the Enuma Elish, the goddess that Marduk fights is Tiamat, a sea water goddess. The Egyptians had Nun, god of the primeval waters. In the Greek Theogony by Hesiod (500s BCE), the creation begins with -- you guessed it -- water. Aristotle distinguished the first Greek philosopher Thales (also 500s BCE) as different because he looked for a natural substance as the basis for the world rather than gods. But guess what substance he proposed as the most basic element of the world? You guessed it. Water.

So the cultural surroundings of Genesis would make it easy for us to think that it too saw water as an eternal given. God would have been meeting the Israelites where they were in their categories and speaking to them from there. [32] 

There are some grammatical features to Genesis 1:1 that are relevant to discuss. The very first word, bereshith, is curious in that it often has a sense of "first of" (e.g., Exod. 23:19). Building on this dynamic, the 1985 translation of the Jewish Publication Society rendered Genesis 1:1 to say, "When God began to create the heaven and earth... God said 'Let there be light.'" The sense it gave was that 1:1 was not a sentence but the setting for what follows. When God began (in the beginning of God creating) -- and the waters were unformed -- he started by saying "Let there be light."

This move seems a little strained (and unnecessary). The word can just mean "first." And the waters of 1:2 seem to be there waiting to be ordered one way or another. Further, as we have argued, 1:1 makes more sense as an overview of the whole chapter.

Another question is the meaning of bara', which means to create. It is not a frequently used word in the Old Testament, and it is always used with God as the subject -- "God created." Some have wanted to read a special meaning in here as in creation out of nothing. However, this meaning is not clear. It simply seems to be a word for making but that specifically refers to God making something.

What then is the meaning of 1:2. At the beginning of creation, there are two entities: God and the useless, non-functioning, chaotic, primordial waters. There is nothing but darkness. But a wind from God blew over the waters. This is the way things are when God decides to start to order the cosmos.

We have already discussed the origins of the doctrine of creation out of nothing in the previous chapter. We have framed it as a consensus of Christian (and Jewish) faith, and implied it is correct as a theological belief. However, we also made it clear that it likely reflects a "development of doctrine." That is to say, it is a belief that probably was not articulated in biblical times. It is not that the Bible opposes the belief -- not at all. It is simply not a thought that anyone had yet had.

Our exegesis of Genesis 1:1-2 supports this sense of development. At the time of the Old Testament, it was more or less assumed that everything had emerged from chaotic, primeval waters. That was not the point of revelation about creation. The point was that the God of Israel -- and he alone, almighty -- was the one who brought order to the cosmos.

[27] So also the Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh translation.

[28] E.g., Claus Westermann translates it as “wind” in Genesis 1–11 (Fortress, 1990).

[29] The distinction between Israelite and Jewish largely has to do with the Babylonian captivity of 586-538BCE. Since the northern kingdom of Israel was destroyed in 722BCE, only the southern kingdom of Judah was left to go into captivity in 586BCE when Jerusalem was destroyed. Although “Israel” can still be used after this point, it is common to increasingly refer to those who returned as Judahites or Jews after the exile. Accordingly, if Genesis 1 was written after the exile, we might refer to its first audience as Judahites or Jews.

[30] Or it could be the other way around, Isaiah 45 may have helped inspire Genesis 1:2.

[31] Walton, Lost World, 43-45.

[32] It seems like any in depth understanding of Scripture will need to see somewhat of a "flow" of revelation as the understanding gets more precise the further we go in the river. 

Notes Along the Way -- God's Callings Part II

Last week I posted from some notes I've been making about my life. That post was about my strong sense that God wanted me to go to Central Wesleyan College, now Southern Wesleyan. Here is the second part of that chapter.
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5. Central was a great place for me to grow up a little. Don't get me wrong. I'm not sure I fully reached adulthood until my 50s. But I was another run of the mill immature male in 1984 who had a mother who helicoptered me long before it became the rage. 

To me, Central was FREEDOM! I could set my own schedule. I could order my life in my own time. And in a world before email, cell phones, and texting, I was pretty much on my own.

It was of course a small train wreck. Finals week of my first semester I tried to pull two all nighters in a row to get all my work done. The first was trying to finish reading through the rest of the Old Testament (in the King James) for Herb Dongell. I didn't succeed. 

The second night was in the chemistry lab. Central had graciously -- but unwisely -- given me 8 hours of introductory chemistry for a 3 on the AP test, my lowest score. I knew some chemistry, but I didn't know the full equivalent of a year's worth. So I started college in Inorganic Analytical Chemistry, and I didn't know what the heck I was doing.

Dr. Schmutz was the kindest of men -- I think a former Quaker turned Wesleyan. But expecting us to be responsible adults, our 10 labs were just due by the end of the semester -- a delightful, terrible test of discipline for me. I had five labs still to go coming into finals week.

If I had finished the science route, I would have made a much better theoretical physicist or chemist than an experimental one. I used to sit neurotically trying to balance the scale to weigh something. In weighing, I would take so long doubting my reading that I suspect some of my samples took on water. One of my results that week broke the law that matter cannot be created -- I ended up with more mass than I started.

AI could have helped fill in gaps if it had been around but, alas, I had no idea where to turn for what I didn't know.

6. There were three of us chemistry majors that semester -- something I tried to sell my high school chemistry teacher when I told him where I was going. "There are only three of us and I'll have my own keys to the chem lab and stock room," I told him, trying to be enthusiastic. He was very kind, but I know very disappointed.

Rodney Clark and Micah Travis were good friends. Still friends. Micah was really the only person at Central that I had known before coming to Central, a fellow Floridian. Micah and I had a delightful all-nighter working to finish our experiments. I used a magnetic stirrer to mix my instant tea in a beaker. We cooked mac and cheese with a Bensen burner and then served them on Petri dishes. Micah slept on Dr. Schmutz's office floor.

The next morning we had our last class of Calculus III (Central had given me 8 credits of Calculus for a 5 on the AP test). There were only three of us in there -- me, Micah, and Alan Payne. But I was exhausted. I woke up with everyone gone and the lights out in the room, face on the desk with mouth agape. Apparently, Dr. Mickey Rickman had said to just leave me there -- that I needed sleep more than whatever topic we were covering.

I had to phone the final lab results back to Dr. Schmutz over the phone -- incredibly gracious on his part. The numbers weren't right but there was nothing I could do about it. Someone had taken me to the Greenville airport and I had fallen asleep before the plane left the ground. It was the lowest grade of my college career, what was no doubt a very gracious B-.

7. The spirit was willing. The flesh was week. "I'll work on it tonight." "I'll get up early." "I'll work on it after lunch." In my later years we would say, "Let's get a late key and go do homework at Huddle House." But after eating, "I'm tired. Let's go back and work at the dorm."

I was never diagnosed, but I wonder if I was attention deficit. I could barely read a paragraph without my mind going somewhere else. It took every bit of will to force myself through reading even though I wanted ever so desperately to do it. Later on I would stand to read or read out loud.

Posture matters. In those days, sometimes I would lie in bed with a book on the floor trying to read -- disaster.

I was an idealist and a dreamer in those days. (I would become a pragmatist and a dreamer later on.) I had a 7:50am class in Art Appreciation with Dr. Barbara Bross. She was great, but I just couldn't stay awake. I always shook my head at IWU when Dr. Lennox would tell new students to sign up for a 7:50 class. "Don't set yourself up for failure," I would think to myself.

I slept in an inordinate number of college classes. In a Dr. Marling Elliott's class on the Poetic Books, I sat on the front row to try to stay awake. One day I made a comment and instantly fell asleep. Scott Key asked what I had said from the back, and they had to wake me up to answer.

Dr. Dongell was particularly harsh toward sleepers. But he was always gracious to me. I mostly stayed awake in his classes though. Sometimes in Dr. Ken Foutz's classes, I would line my head up with someone's head between me and the professor so I might at least have a chance of dozing with anonymity.

8. But the biggest event of my freshman year of college was another calling. You could argue that God used my personal struggles to push me in a different vocational direction. As the semester moved forward, I began more and more to feel like God was calling me into ministry. I'm glad to spiritualize it, but you can see the psychological factors in play too. I am philosophical by nature and, although I couldn't have told you at the time, I was deeply attracted to theology more than what ministers do most of the time. What higher study was there than the study of God?

Of course ministry is primarily about people and faciliating God's engagement with people and people's engagement with God. Rev. James Wiggins would be my primary mentor for ministry in those days, and he modeled visitation. I predictably liked preaching. He modeled concrete, down to earth care for people -- and especially their souls.

But, again, for someone whose primary mode was doubt -- even in front of a chemistry balance -- I had an uncanny sense of certainty and clarity at the end of that first semester. I told my parents when I got home. "I think God is calling me into ministry." 

My mother was not surprised and was delighted. I think my father was happy too, but he wisely advised that I continue my second semester in chemistry as planned. "Then if you still feel the same at the end of the semester, you can switch." 

It was a wise plan. Spring semester went much better -- spring always did. The darkness of fall and winter was always depressing for me at Central and later in Wilmore at Asbury. One of the happiest days of the year at Central was when the flowers at Clemson came into full bloom in the spring.

So I did my second semester of math and science -- Differential Equations, Organic Analytical Chemistry, Zoology, Physics II at Clemson. I loved it. Hoped I could still finish chemistry and math degrees too at that point. (I haven't totally given up -- I'm technically a chemistry major at Arizona State University at this moment.)

But I had complete confidence that God was calling me into ministry. It was the second time in my life that I had been absolutely confident about what I thought was God's will. The first was going to Central in the first place. Now the second was to become a minister.

Romans' Story -- Romans 1:16-17 (What's the point of the letter?)

Lead up to Romans
Romans 16 -- Paul's letter to Ephesus
Romans 15:14-33 -- situation of Romans
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1. We now have a fair sense of the setting of Romans. Now let's get down to writing.

In Romans 16:22, someone named Tertius greets the audience of the chapter as the writer of the letter. I suspect many of us come to that verse and are a little puzzled. "What? Isn't this Paul's letter? I've been reading Romans for sixteen chapters thinking it was Paul writing all this time?"

Of course, Paul is the voice of Romans. Tertius was the secretary, the scribe. In more technical terms, he was the "amanuensis."

Letter writing was a bigger deal back then by far than it is now. [1] We whip off texts and emails in seconds. Before email, an ordinary person had easy access to pen, paper, envelopes, and stamps. One of the blessings of the modern world is a postal system. Want to write someone halfway around the world? No big deal.

In the ancient world, the majority of people could neither read nor write. Papyrus and ink was far more expensive and less available than letter-writing tools today. Letters of Paul's length were very unusual, and they would normally be planned rather than written in one sitting. A copy would be made to keep as well as to send. And of course someone would need to take the letter to the destination. There was no Roman postal service for ordinary people.

For those who think Romans 16 was part of the letter to Rome, it is very common to think that Phoebe was the one who not only delivered the letter of Romans to Rome but who probably read it to the congregations of Rome -- perhaps house church by house church. [2] While I find this a very attractive possibility, my sense that Romans 16 was actually for Ephesus of course precludes it.

2. So, Paul and Tertius plan out the letter. It will have two main parts. For the bulk of the letter Paul will set forth how his mission to non-Jews, to the Gentiles, powerfully demostrates the righteousness of God. He will make a fun play on the word. When they first hear the phrase, they will think of the fact that God is righteous. That is to say, it is God's character to reach out to save his people and, indeed, the whole world. He is righteous.

Paul has his thesis clearly in mind. While some Christian Jews were embarrassed that so many Gentiles were coming to faith, Paul was in no way ashamed. "I like that," Tertius says. "I am not ashamed of the gospel" (Rom. 1:16), Paul sets it down. He was not ashamed of this good news that was for everyone -- non-Jews as well as Jews.

"Why aren't you ashamed," Tertius asks.

"Why, because this good news is the power of God for salvation," Paul answers. "And it is not just for Jews but for everyone who believes."

Salvation for him is primarily something that is future. He will say it in 13:11 -- our salvation is closer now than when we first believed. 

So, what was salvation for Paul? It was escaping the judgment of the world when Jesus Christ returned from heaven to establish his kingdom on earth. It was being rescued from this present evil age (Gal. 1:4). Yes, Paul believed we were delivered from the power of Sin now, but he usually did not talk of us "getting saved" now in the way we often do. [3]

Romans 5:9 puts it well: "How much more then now, since we have been justified by means of his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath." There you have it. Salvation is to escape the future, coming wrath of God when he judges the world. [4]

"The gospel is for everyone," Tertius notes to Paul. "But don't the Jews have any priority? Isn't that why you have so many opponents in Jerusalem?"

"Let's put in that it is for everyone but 'to the Jew first and also to the Greek'" (1:16), Paul says. 

"Great!" Tertius says and he reads back to Paul the thesis statement of the letter so far. "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God leading to salvation for everyone who has faith -- the Jew first but also the Greek."

"Excellent," Paul says. 

It's hard for us to see it in English, but the word for faith in Greek (pistis) is closely related to the word for believing (pisteuo). It has more than one meaning, although they are related. Words normally mean one thing at a time (unless there's a double entendre). They do not mean all of their meanings at once.

I sometimes draw a stick figure on the whiteboard at this point. When pistis is focused on the "head" -- what we are thinking -- it tends to mean something like "belief." When it is focused more on the hands or feet -- what we do -- it tends to mean something like "faithfulness" (e.g., Rom. 3:3). Paul's normal usage is more heart-related and is more like "trust." And trust, in this case, probably has an overtone of allegiance. [5]

Final salvation is available to all who have faith, to all who trust in what God has done through Jesus and his blood. We will discover soon enough that Paul primarily thinks of us putting our faith in God the Father. Yes, we do trust in Christ too (e.g., Rom. 9:33). Jesus is the password. God the Father is "all in all" for Paul (1 Cor. 15:28). [6]

3. "What basis are you going to give in the letter for this bold claim," Tertius asks Paul.

"Why, it's grounded in the righteousness of God," Paul says. He begins quoting passages from the later chapters of Isaiah like 46:13 -- "I bring near my righteousness. It is not far off. And my salvation will not delay." But Paul especially was thinking of Psalm 98:2 -- "The LORD has made known his salvation. He has revealed his righteousness among the Gentiles."

So the concept of the righteousness of God was thoroughly known in Jewish circles. It was closely connected with the salvation God brought to his people from the Old Testament to the Dead Sea Scrolls of the Essenes. And Paul was now saying that God's same saving righteousness extended to non-Jews.

"I want to be clever with some of these terms we throw around," Paul says. "I want to keep them on their toes as they read."

"How so?" Tertius asked.

"For example," Paul continued. "God's faith or faithfulness leads to us responding in faith."

"Neat," Tertius responded. "So the righteousness of God is revealed 'from faith to faith'" (Rom. 1:17).

"Exactly," Paul said. 

"Is there a Scripture you can use to help convince those who are resisting these new ideas?"

"Yes," Paul said confidently. "Habakkuk 2:4: 'The person who is righteous will live in faith.' But I want to move the words 'by faith' to the middle so there is a double entendre: 'The person who is righteous by faith will live.'"

"I see," Tertius said excitedly. "On the one hand, there is what Habakkuk was talking about -- living in faithfulness to God whatever happend. But there is alos the idea that when you become right with God on the basis of faith, you will live!"

"You've got it," Paul said. "I want to play again on the phrase 'righteousness of God.' There is the normal meaning that God is righteous. But I want to move them to see that he makes us right with him too -- he justifies us."

Again, it is hard for us English speakers to see, but the word for righteous (dikaios) is from the same root as the word to justify (dikaioo). To "justify" thus means to "declare right" with God. When God justifies us, Paul would say, he considers us right with him, in good legal standing. Much more of that to come.

"So here is the whole thesis statement for the letter," Tertius said. "I am not ashamed of the good news, for it is the power of salvation to everyone who has faith, the Jew first and also the Greek. For in it, God's righteousness is revealed, starting with his faithfulness and resulting in our faith response. This is what Habakkuk wrote when he said, 'The person who is right with God on the basis of faith will live.'"

"It's a great start," Paul said.

[1] Two well-known studies on ancient letter writing in relation to the New Testament are Stanley K. Stowers, Letter Writing in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Westminster, 1986) and E. Randolph Richards, Paul and First Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition, and Collection (IVP Academic, 2004).

[2] E.g., Scot McKnight, Reading Romans Backwards: A Gospel of Peace in the Midst of Empire (Baylor University, 2021) and Beverly Gaventa, Romans: A Commentary (Westminster John Knox, 2024), 430. I do not yet have Susan Eastman's new Romans commentary, but I suspect she takes the same position.

[3] We should note, for example, that the past (technically perfect) tense reference in Ephesians 2:8 is highly unusual among Paul's writings -- "by grace you have been saved." Even here, it is likely proleptic -- your salvation is a "done-deal" because you have trusted in Christ. In other words, while salvation is technically future, we can speak of it as something accomplished and remaining true today even though it has not happened yet.

[4] There is nothing wrong with our theology when we say, "I got saved ten years ago." It just isn't generally the way Paul talked. Paul also speaks of "being saved" twice (1 Cor. 1:18; 2 Cor. 2:15) in the present tense. But this seems anticipatory rather than a statement of process. In other words, the meaning is something like, "those of us who are scheduled to be saved."

[5] See Matthew Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Baker Academic, 2017).

[6] Orthodox Christianity as it developed in the 300s does not see a hierarchy in the Trinity. Sometimes Paul's language of subordination is taken in relation to Jesus' humanity rather than his divinity. In general, I believe we need to have at least a small sense of doctrinal elaboration from the New Testament to the counsels if we wish to be orthodox.

4.2 The Genre of Genesis 1

The previous post started this chapter on "Interpreting Genesis 1."
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4.2.1 The Nature of Genre
We ended the previous section by saying that the interpretation of Genesis 1 in the end depends largely on the genre of the chapter. Genre is the type of literature something is. The same words might make us laugh or cry depending on whether they are situated in a comedy or a tragedy. For example, the words "He fell off the roof" might be funny in one movie but tragic in another. Accordingly, it is difficult to know whether to read the days of Genesis 1 literally or figuratively until we have first considered what kind of text Genesis 1 was intended to be. 

Here we reach an important principle in reading the Bible in general. Many Christians affirm that the Bible is God's word for us -- a conviction Christians have held throughout the centuries. Yet this conviction can sometimes lead us to assume that reading the words in modern English automatically reveals what they meant in their original setting.

But the words of Scripture were not first written to us. They were written in other languages long before English even existed. The meanings of the words made sense to the people for whom these books were first written -- ancient Israelites, Romans, Corinthians, Thessalonians, and so forth. Even in our own families today, the way our parents or grandparents use words can differ from how the children or grandchildren use them, and in this case, we are only a few decades different in age. Imagine how different the meanings and connotations of words likely were two or three thousand years ago in entirely different languages!

If we want to know the original meaning of Genesis 1, then, we have to get in a time machine and try to determine how the ancient Israelites would have heard these words. It should not be too surprising that, when God inspired these words for ancient Israel, he inspired them in their language and in categories that they could understand. What a self-centered assumption it would be if we thought that the default meaning of Scripture is how it strikes me thousands of years later -- especially when the Bible tells us repeatedly that it was written to them!

Thus, the question of genre is in the first place a historical one. How did God inspire the author of Genesis to write for ancient Israel in such a way that they would hear what he wanted them to hear? What kind of text did ancient Israel understand Genesis 1 to be?

4.2.2 An Introduction
It should not be too controversial to claim that Genesis 1:1-2:3 is some kind of introduction. In fact, some would consider it to be an introduction to the first five books of the Bible, often called the "Pentateuch" or "five scrolls." As we will see, even though Genesis 2 continues the theme of creation from Genesis 1, it has a quite different flavor from Genesis 1. Many even consider them to be two different creation accounts for reasons we will explore in chapter 8.

A key observation is that Genesis is largely structured around the expression, "these are the generations (toledoth) of." [9] However, these do not begin in Genesis 1. They begin in Genesis 2 with the story of the man and the woman. It is thus easy to argue that Genesis 1:1-2:3 is at least a kind of introduction to the book of Genesis.

Many scholars would go further and consider Genesis 1 to be an introduction to all five books of the Pentateuch -- Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Here we get into some debated territory as well in terms of who the author of Genesis was and when it was written. The traditional view since ancient times is of course that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. However, Genesis never mentions Moses and in fact the Pentateuch uniformly refers to Moses in the third person -- he did this, he did that, he went up on a mountain and died. Inductively speaking, most of the Pentateuch is about Moses but is not worded as if it is by Moses. [10]

Nevertheless, the New Testament, including the words of Jesus, seem to assume that Moses is the source of the Pentateuch. On the one hand, if we read the New Testament carefully, most instances actually refer to the words Moses says in the Pentateuch rather than the Pentateuch as a whole. There are no places where Jesus directly attributes a passage in Genesis to Moses. Yes, the New Testament can refer to the "Law of Moses" in a way that probably included Genesis (e.g., Luke 24:44). However, the way we refer to a collection is not necessarily a claim about every word in it. "The Law of Moses" is a fitting title for the Pentateuch because its primary contents are the laws of Moses.

A further consideration is the fact that revelation from God would seem to be "incarnated." That is to say, God reveals truth to us in ways we can understand. When you are studying physics, you can take physics with algebra or you can take physics with calculus. Both are correct but one is much more precise and detailed. Presumably when God speaks, he wants to be understood. 

Just as we alter our language when we are speaking to a child, God surely "translated" his revelation into categories the original audiences would understand. He does not worry about Paul's "three story universe" of things above the earth, things on the earth, and things under the earth (Phil. 2:10). He did not worry that Paul apparently thought there were three levels of sky as you went up, with God in the highest layer (2 Cor. 12:2). Paul's "cosmology" was not the point of these passages. It was the "envelope" in which the letter of revelation came. It was the "flesh" the message took on (thus "incarnated" as in John 1:14).

What we are saying is that the fact that the New Testament seems to assume Mosaic authorship may have been the "clothing" New Testament revelation came in rather than the point of the revelation per se. It may have been the envelope rather than the contents.

We should mention one final possible distinction between how we think about authorship and how the ancients did. For the last five hundred years, since the rise of printing, we have mostly lived in a literary culture. We tend to think of authorship primarily in terms of the person who actually puts pen to paper (or finger to keyboard). Yet in the oral cultures of the ancient world, authorship was much more about the primary source of information rather than the scribe. In recent times, we still have the notion of a "ghost writer" who drafts material for the person whose name appears on the book. [11]

The point is that there would have been far less of a distinction in the ancient mind between Moses as the primary source of Pentateuchal material and Moses as the literal author as we tend to think of one.

The reason for this background discussion is to note that many if not most scholars believe that the Pentateuch has incorporated many sources, both oral and perhaps written, in the process of its composition. The most influential theory of this sort was of course the documentary hypothesis of Julius Wellhausen in 1878. [12] However, he was synthesizing observations that went back a century earlier, and of course his theories have been significantly modified and discussed in the last hundred and fifty years. [13]

One feature of those discussions that has remained is a sense that Genesis 1 was one of the last pieces of the Pentateuch to be written. In this theory, it would date to the late exilic or early post-exilic period (late 500s or 400s). Its origins are sometmies supposed to be "priestly" in nature. [14] In any approach of this nature, Genesis 1 certainly served as an introduction to the Pentateuch, and we would not be surprise to find it resonating with various elements in the Law.

Whether one goes with Mosaic authorship or modern compositional theories, then, Genesis 1 is arguably an introduction to what follows. The scope of the introduction is debated. Does it only introduce the first eleven chapters. Does it introduce the whole book of Genesis? Or is it an introduction to the entire Pentateuch? Probably most Genesis experts would say the whole Pentateuch.

4.2.3 Ancient Cosmology
If Genesis 1 is an introduction, into what category or categories would an ancient Israelite have placed it? It certainly has a narrative format, but it also has a clear structure with its seven days. Would an ancient Israelite have thought of it as history, cosmology, liturgy, epic, or yet some another category?What we are really asking is what other texts -- oral or written -- would they have compared it to? 

Here, the Enuma Elish immediately comes to mind, the Babylonian creation story. Most scholars date its composition to the second millennium BCE, before the time of David. However, even then, it drew on older Mesopotamian traditions. At that same time, similar traditions were circulating in Egypt, Canaan, and an important city known as Ugarit. The Enuma Elish may not have circulated widely in Israel before the exile, but Israelites would have been familiar with similar texts. The exiles from Judah in the mid-500s BCE almost certainly would have encountered it in Babylon. [15]

Most find it highly instructive to bring the creation story in Genesis 1 into dialog with the Enuma Elish because of the clear contrasts. For example, where the Enuma Elish pictures creation as a battle between multiple gods, there is only one God in Genesis 1. [16] He fights no one. Rather, he speaks, and it is done. Such an exclusive sense of God as Creator was unprecedented in the ancient world. It would have been striking to any audience of Genesis 1 from that day. 

Genesis 1 gives us God as unparalleled -- the other gods might as well not even exist. Similarly, the power of God over the creation is absolute. The primordial waters of Genesis 1:2 cannot resist his will. He tells them to separate and they do without any resistance (1:6-7). By contrast, in the Enuma Elish, order comes when Marduk defeats the salt water god Tiamat and, as in Genesis, divides her waters and distributes them throughout the creation.

The creation of Genesis 1 also structures the world for Israel, revealing an Israelite "cosmology." A cosmology is a sense of the universe and the way it works. Genesis 1 sees the creation of an orderly world that started out as tohu wavohu, chaotic and useless. The cosmology of Genesis 1 is a mirror of Israel's worldview. It reflects the regular rhythm of Sabbath. Plants and animals are created "according to their kinds" (1:12, 19, 24-25), hints at the worldview of Leviticus with its food laws.

Interestingly, the apostle Paul in the New Testament did not consider the Jewish Sabbath to be binding on Gentile believers (Rom. 14:5; cf. Col. 2:16). It seems likely that both Paul and Mark did not consider the Jewish food laws to be binding on Gentile believers either (cf. Rom. 14:14; Col. 2:21; Mark 7:19). Paul and Mark thus implicitly treat the worldview of Genesis 1 as an expression of Jewish identity rather than as a universal blueprint.

This is an important question for the interpretation of Genesis 1. Should we take it as an expression of Israelite theology or a historical, quasi-scientific exposition? If it primarily functioned for Israel to have a different picture of Yahweh than the peoples around them while introducing the Pentateuch at the same time, then probably its purpose had more to do with theology than science or history.

John Walton has argued that we should read Genesis 1 as an expression of ancient cosmology. [17] He suggests it has always been wrongheaded to try to translate it into a later cosmology such as ours. "If God aligned revelation with one particular science, it would have been unintelligible to people who lived prior to the time of that science, and it would be obsolete to those who live after that time." [18] So, he claims, God aligns the cosmology of Genesis 1 with the cosmology of Israel at the time of writing. That is, God expresses revealed truths by "incarnating" it in Israel's "language." He gives revelation the flesh of Israel's ancient cosmology.

What did cosmologies as a genre do in the ancient world? Walton writes, "Creation constituted bringing order to the cosmos from an originally non-functional condition." [19] And so, it would seem, Genesis 1 expresses the all-power of the one God who calls into existence things that didn't exist (Rom. 4:17).

4.2.4 A Yearly Liturgy?
For the last several decades, a number of Genesis scholars have speculated that Genesis 1 might be even more than an expression of ancient cosmology. Although it would be difficult to prove, they have made a compelling case that Genesis 1 might have been read and performed every year at the temple as a liturgy. [20] A liturgy is a ceremony of worship to a deity. If you go to church on Sunday, the service you attend basically consists of a liturgy of worship to God with songs, prayers, sermons, and more.

Someone might first think, "Where did that come from? There are no obvious clues in the text that would signal that interpretation to us in our world." However, John Walton and a number of others have argued that this meaning would have been obvious to an ancient Jew in their world, not least because of a worship event that took place every New Year at the temple where this text was "performed" every year. As Scripture, this text is for us, but it was not written first to us.

Several clues make this a compelling case. For one, the Enuma Elish itself was read every year at a festival in Babylon (the Akitu festival) where  god Marduk was "reinstalled" in his temple, understood to be the universe. [21] Walton argues that the idea that God is building his cosmic temple in Genesis 1 would have been obvious to an ancient audience. [22] For example, the number seven appears pervasively in relation to temples both in the Bible and in its surounding cultures (cf. 1 Kings 8:65). [23] In Exodus 40:2, the Tent of Meeting is erected on New Year (cf. also Lev. 23 and Num. 29).

Here is the picture that Walton and others suggest. Every year as a new year began, Israel would have had a festival in which Yahweh was re-installed in his cosmic temple. [24] In the ancient world, earthly temples were often considered to be models that represented the much larger temple of the cosmos (cf. Heb. 8:2, 5). This would have been a 7 day festival, and the days of Genesis would have related to literal 24 hour days within the festival. [25]

The climax of the festival was then when Yahweh finished the building of his temple and then he moved in on day 7. The Sabbath is Yahweh resting from his work of fighting back chaos, ordering his temple, and then taking up his place within in. [26] Now that he is installed again, he will rule over the cosmos for another year. He takes his seat in the temple he has just built.

In the light of the ancient world and clues in the text, this case seems compelling even if it is perhaps not proven. It certainly changes the way we understand Genesis 1. It comes to be about much different things that our current scientific debates. It truly becomes "independent" of modern science in relation to creation. Genesis 1 becomes a yearly temple liturgy that takes place over 7 literal 24 hour days. This position is not proven, but it is a very reasonable suggestion.

[9] Genesis 2:4; 5:1; 6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27; 25:12, 19; 36:1, 9; 37:2.

[10] By "inductively," we mean based on what the text itself says rather than traditions about the text.

[11] Celebrities especially tend to have individuals who do most of the writing for the books that appear under their name. They of course sign off on the material but may be more or less engaged in the actual process of writing.

[12] Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, trans. by J. Sutherland Black and Allan Menzies. (A. & C. Black, 1885).

[13] For the current state of the discussion, see Joel S. Baden, The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (Yale University, 2012).

[14] E.g., Mark S. Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (Fortress, 2009).

[15] Cf. Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis: The Story of Creation (University of Chicago, 1951); Richard J. Clifford, Creation Accounts in the Ancient Near East and in the Bible (Catholic Biblical Association, 1994).

[16] The word for a god in Hebrew is el. Interestingly, the form used throughout Genesis 1 is plural: elohim. So it would most naturally refer to gods, plural. However, when it is used for Israel’s God, elohim consistently takes verbs and adjectives that are singular. Scholars debate why. Some see it as a “plural of majesty.” Others think it might reflect an earlier period in Israel’s history when a sense of plural gods was still common before the exclusive worship of Yahweh took hold.

[17] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 14-21.

[18] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 15. See also Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (Princeton, 1988)

[19] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 33.

[20] E.g., Moshe Weinfeld, "Sabbath, Temple, and the Enthronement of the Lord -- The Problem of the Sitz im Leben of Genesis 1:1-2:3," in Mélanges bibliques et orientaux en l'honneur de M. Henri Cazelles, A. Caquot and M. Delcor, eds. Alter Orient and Altes Testament 212 (Butzon & Bercker, 1981), 502-12.

[21] E.g., Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 89.

[22] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 86.

[23] E.g., Jon Levenson, "The Temple and the World," Journal of Religion 64 (1984): 288-89.

[24] Cf. Judges 21:19. The Feast of Trumpets, while not on the first day of the year, has become Rosh Hashanah in Judaism, the Jewish new year.

[25] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 90.

[26] Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1, 71-76.

Pensée 5.2: Monarchies and theocracies aren't reliable.

1. Plato (ca. 428-347) believed that the ideal government was rule under a king. For Plato, this should be a "philosopher king," someone who ruled according to wisdom and virtue. [1] For him, these individuals in theory could be men or women. The key was that their minds were able to contemplate the "forms" behind all the reality we see. Of course, when he tried to put his ideas into practice by mentoring the king's son in Syracuse, he utterly failed. When the heir became king, he did whatever he wanted. 

It's good to be the king.

Aristotle also thought that a benevolent monarchy might be the best form of government in theory. A king has the authority to get done what needs to be done. There is an efficiency to that much power. People generally do what you tell them to when you're the king. If a king is wise and good, a monarchy would be the ideal. [2]

The problem is that you can't count on a king being wise or good. Accordingly, from a practical perspective, Aristotle thought the best form of government would more likely be a "polity," a mixture of ordinary people and the wealthy ruling under a Constitution. Aristotle also had an opportunity to mentor a future king. His student, Alexander the Great, turned out much better than Plato's.

2. As I said in the previous pensée, few of us get to choose what sort of a government we have. Nevertheless, Aristotle captures the situation well. In theory, a benevolent monarchy under the rule of a wise and good king (or queen) might be ideal. [3] But you can't count on a king being either wise or good. 

More often than not, the role of a king is passed down from parent to child. History is full of bloodshed in the moment between rulers. If there is more than one child, they may vie for the throne -- despite rules that have been set up. Any moment of weakness tends to be seized by the most powerful forces that see their chance to step in and take over the throne.

Even if the transition is peaceful, the one who takes over the throne may not be as virtuous as their parent. They may not be as intelligent or gifted as their parent. And you are stuck with them for life.

The Bible is full of examples of these dynamics. After Solomon, Israel has two kingdoms, a northern kingdom and a southern one. The northern kingdom is the story of one bad king after another with repeated coups and overthrows of the sitting dynasty. Similarly, from the perspective of 1 and 2 Kings, few of the kings in the South are truly virtuous, although the Davidic dynasty at least manages to stay intact.

The bottom line is that while the idea of a monarchy has some strong aspects to commend it, in practice it is unreliable over the long haul. And the fact that a kingship is for life means you may be stuck with a buffoon or tyrant for decades. For this reason, less power invested in an executive is advisable, with clear checks and balances on a leader's power.

3. A theocracy aims to be direct rule by a god. When Moses and Joshua led Israel, that in theory was a period of theocracy. God met Moses regularly at the Tent of Meeting and gave him instruction, and Moses consistently obeyed. Similarly, we see Joshua consistently leading Israel in the conquest in obedience to God.

However, that's it. The period of the judges is hardly a period when Israel did what was right. Quite to the contrary, the period is described as a time when everyone did what was right in their own eyes (Judg. 21:25). Most Old Testament scholars similarly would suggest that even the portrayal of theocratic rule in the Pentateuch and Joshua is somewhat idealized.

In general, the problem with a theocracy is that the will of the god has to be moderated and interpreted by someone. In reality, a theocracy ends up being less the rule of a god as the rule of a country by priests or a single prophetic figure. It is a monarchy in disguise or an aristocracy in disguise, where an aristocracy is allegedly rule by the "best."

Take Iran, whose highest authority is the Supreme Leader. Although there is an elected president as well, this most powerful role is held by an Islamic cleric -- a religious leader. In theory, this Ayatollah runs the country as Allah wants it to be run. But in reality, who is running the show? It is the Ayatollah, the one who tells the people what Allah thinks. In many ways, this gives him far more authority than a king, because he allegedly is representing god.

4. When John Calvin (1509-1564) ran Geneva or the Puritans ran the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s, those leaders certainly thought they were running the city or state the way that God wanted it to be run. But in the end, it was their interpretation of the Bible. Such "theocracies" typically turn out to be oppressive to someone with a different interpretation.

This is the great blind spot of so much Protestantism. The Bible has to be interpreted. Therefore, a theocracy will never fully be rule by God. It will inevitably be rule by the one who gets to interpret the Bible for everyone else.

As I write this pensée, a particular segment of evangelical Christianity has unprecedented influence in the United States. No doubt the greatest of these influencers think they are simply trying to make America's laws and practices mirror the Bible. What many don't realize is that it is their interpretation of the Bible that they are trying to impose on the nation. And few if any of them are actually legitimate experts on the Bible. It seems quite likely that they will bring a similar oppression that has almost always accompanied attempts to impose a particular religious understanding on a people (think sharia law in Muslim countries).

Theocracies are thus smoke and mirror monarchies and oligarchies. They are unreliable forms of government because their true basis isn't even what they claim it is.

[1] Plato, Republic 472a-474b.

[2] Aristotle, Politics 1279a–1288b.

[3] Aristotle did not think a woman could be a wise and good ruler. He thought women were "uncooked men," in effect. Unfortunately, his ideas on the structures of the household were in the cultural water, resulting in the social structures that the household codes of the New Testament try to redeem (e.g., compare Ephesians 5:21-6:9 with Aristotle, Politics 1253b–1255b. 

Science and Scripture -- Differing Views of Genesis 1

Tuesday would normally be my science and Scripture day, so I thought I would put a pulse in. This would be the beginning of chapter 4: "Interpreting Genesis 1."
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4.1 Differing Views
At first glance, the meaning of Genesis 1 might seem rather straightforward. However, given the tension between science and faith these last 150 years, a multitude of attempts have been made to harmonize Genesis 1 with contemporary science. These interpretations fall into three broad categories. First, there are interpretations that take the days of Genesis 1 as literal 24 hour days and read the chapter as a straightforward historical account. Then there are those approaches that see the days somewhat figuratively even though broadly sequential. Finally, there are views that interpret Genesis 1 as a more theological or liturgical presentation.

4.1.1 Literal Approaches
Within each of these options, we find several other suggestions. For example, the "literal" interpretation of Genesis 1 takes the "days" of the chapter as literal 24 hour days. You thus have young earth creationists like Ken Ham who would argue that the world was created 6000-10,000 years ago. [1] Indeed, Exodus 20:11 and 31:17 seem to take the days of Genesis 1 as normal 24 hour days.

Yet there are some interesting variations on this approach both on the Scripture and the science side. For example, on the science side, there are those who have argued that the earth is young but that it has apparent age. The notion is that God created the universe and Earth to look old even though they are not. Someone might say that God created the light from the stars already here rather than having to travel all that distance from the start. In this way of thinking, all the inferences scientists have made about the age of the Earth and the universe are correct -- it is just that God made it look that way from the beginning. However, the days of Genesis remain literal 24 hour days.

A common response is that God comes off as a trickster or deceiver in this scenario. [2] However, this response seems somewhat debatable. If God made light from distant stars already here, he presumably did it for our benefit. He did not say, "The universe is really old." God did not tell you a lie. You simply would have drawn a wrong conclusion on your own. The universe never asked you to guess its age.  

Nevertheless, it would be a little puzzling why God would make meteorites look like uranium had been deteriorating for 4.5 billion years. It is puzzling why he would plant less complex fossils on lower geological layers and more complex ones on higher ones. It would not be lying on God's part, since he never directly told us what these things meant. It would just be puzzling.

On the Scripture side, there are some very clever interpretations that take the days of Genesis 1 literally yet find a way for the Earth and universe still to be quite old. For example, the gap theory supposes that there may have been a large period of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Isaiah 45:18 is sometimes invoked, a verse that says God did not create the world "formless and void" (tohu), a word used in Genesis 1:2. So, if God did not make the world tohu, yet the world in Genesis 1:2 was tohu, then the argument is that something must have happened between the initial creation in 1:1 and the disorder of 1:2, something like the fall of Satan.

In the early days of evolution, many Christians used the gap theory to try to harmonize the discoveries of science that seemed to point to an old earth with a literal reading of Genesis 1. This view was very prevalent even into the 1950s. For example, the very conservative C. I. Scofield, known for his Scofield King James reference Bible, took this view. This interpretation allowed someone to suppose that dinosaurs and other aspects of geology took place during a period of millions of years between the first two verses of Genesis. 

A similar view is the intermittent day view. This view takes the days of creation as literal 24 hour days, but proposes that there could have been long periods of time between each day. The days become, as it were, the lead off hitters for long periods of time that may have lasted millions of years. Similarly, some have considered the first two verses of Genesis as "Day 0." This could allow for billions of years of development prior to God's specific work on the Earth starting in verse 3.

4.1.2 Symbolic Approaches
In the early church and some parts of Judaism, allegorical readings of Genesis 1 were very common. Philo was a Jew from Alexandria who lived about the same time as Jesus. He did not believe that Genesis 1 gave us a historical account of creation because divine creation for God would have been instantaneous. Instead, the days of creation were a logical explanation of what God created at once. [3]

Similarly, the Christian Origen, writing about 200CE, argued that Genesis 1 could not be literal. How, for example, could there be light before the Sun, moon, or the stars? The deeper meaning of Genesis 1, he supposed, was about Christ (light), the church (firmament), and spiritual growth.

Augustine (354-430CE) similarly did not think that Genesis 1 could be pinned down to a literal meaning. Like Philo, he believed that God created the world instantaneously. The days were figurative, a teaching device. They might symbolize six stages to the Christian life, for example. 

In general, medieval interpretation of the Bible saw various layers of meaning to the text, the so called fourfold sense of Scripture. Yes, there was the "literal" interpretation, the apparent surface meaning. But there was also often an allegorical meaning thought to be hidden in the text. There was a "moral" to the text. And sometimes there was thought to be an "anagogical" meaning that pointed to final realities like heaven or the end of history.

In more recent times, the day-age theory is an example of an approach to the days of Genesis that does not take them as literal 24 hour periods but possibly as representing long periods of time. Reference is often made to Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8, which say that a 1000 years is like a day for God. What if, this approach suggests, each day of Genesis represents millions of years?

The day-age theory, along with the gap theory and intermittent day theories, are often approaches taken by old earth creationists. These are individuals who do not believe in what is called "macro-evolution" but who accept the scientific evidence for an "old" earth and universe. Such individuals reject the notion that complex life developed from simpler forms purely through a process of natural selection. However, they accept the consensus of the scientific community in relation to findings in geology, astronomy, and physics that point to an earth that is around 4.5 billion years old and a universe that is about 13.8 billion years old.

As we look back through history, non-literal or figurative readings of Genesis 1 were fairly common prior to the modern era. It is a reminder that the interpretations that seem obvious to us in any period of time are usually more than what the text actually says. In each time and place, we inherit a paradigm that seems clear but is as much a product of our culture and environment as the text itself.

4.1.3 Literary-Theological Approaches
Most of the views we have expressed thus far are usually classified as concordist views. That is to say, they harmonize a somewhat historical or quasi-scientific reading of the Genesis text with science in some way. They can sometimes come across as finding ingenious, less obvious ways to make the text and modern science align.

In the end, the original meaning of Genesis 1 is a matter of its genre -- what type of literature it was meant to be. Most modern scholars of Genesis would critique the approaches above as imposing later or modern frameworks on the text. In other words, they fail to let the text speak in the way it was originally intended to speak.

In the mid-1900s, a less historical approach arose that was sometimes called the framework hypothesis. [6] The idea was that Genesis 1 provided a more poetic, theological framework for thinking about God and the creation rather than a literal, scientific, or historical one. However, perhaps it would be clearer to call this a literary-theological approach to the text.

For example, John Walton would categorize the genre of Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, perhaps even as liturgy. [7] As ancient cosmology, it was presenting the Israelite view of the world without giving us a scientific view of the world. The key aspects of it were about the nature of God and the creation, not the specifics of how the creation unfolded historically. If it were a liturgy, Walton wonders if Israel might have re-enacted God coming to sit on his throne in a cosmic temple each year. [8]

Viewing it in this way removes any need for us to harmonize the details of Genesis 1 with modern science. In effect, they become somewhat independent of each other. Genesis 1 comes to be about who God is and how Israel was meant to view the creation. Science is then asking completely different questions. We will explore the genre of Genesis 1 in the next section.

[1] Ken Ham, The Lie: Unravelling the Myth: Evolution/Millions of Years (Master, 1987).

[2] E.g., Kenneth Miller, Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution (Harper, 1999), 77-80. So also Francis Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free, 2007), 177-79.

[3] See Philo's work, On the Creation.

[4] Origen, On First Principles, Book 4.

[5] Augustine, Confessions, Book 11; Literal Meaning of Genesis.  

[6] For example, Nicholaas Ridderbos, Is There a Conflict Between Genesis 1 and Natural Science? (Pathway, 1957).

[7] John Walton, Lost World of Genesis 1 (InterVarsity, 2009), 14-20.

[8] Lost World, 86-91.