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 The God of the Old Testament: Introduction — Part 1

Mark L. Carlton

In this series of messages I want to address the charges I hear quite often from atheists concerning the God of the Old Testament. Among other things, I have heard Him called a sadist, a monster, and a tyrant. Cited in support of these charges are things like the great flood, the destruction of the Amorites and the harsh penalties the law demands for what seem to be minor offenses.

Now I must confess that I have never really understood how this argument helps the atheist make his case, since this argument neither proves nor disproves the existence of God. At worst it might be used to demonstrate that the God of the Bible is not good; at best it might demonstrate that we don’t understand Him. What a surprise that is! Who would have ever imagined that finite creatures such as ourselves would have trouble understanding the God of the Universe?

But even if the questions my atheist friends ask are not helpful in determining whether or not God exists, they do cause many who read the Old Testament scriptures to be troubled, and many do take offense. Others have their faith shaken and some lose their faith altogether. This being the case, I want to begin this series by setting forth some principles I find helpful in interpreting the Old Testament. They are also the principles I will be relying on in future messages as we discuss the God of the Old Testament.

I found a good statement of one of these principles during my recent trip to Guyana while reading the book, The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N.T. Wright. Dr. Wright recognizes that there is no such thing as “detached objectivity.” In other words, none of us can be completely objective. Everything we know about the past, from whatever source we have learned it, is mediated through our perceptions and personalities. Thus, none of us can investigate any historical event and claim that we are completely neutral or objective.

But unlike postmodernists, Dr. Wright is careful to add that this does not mean that we can know nothing for sure about the past, or that all of our knowledge must collapse into “meresubjectivity.” He points out that there are ways of moving “towards fair and true statements about the past.” Among these he suggests the reader attempt “to plot the worldview of a particular community by studying, not just its ideas, but the praxis, stories and symbols which constitute the other bottom line elements of worldview.” In other words, if we’re going to make fair judgments about the past, we must place the events of the past in the context of the prevailing world view of those who recorded the events in the first place. We must learn breathe the air of their world.

In talking about the meaning of the resurrection Dr. Wright (in a shot at the likes of Bart Ehrman) says that “we must broaden the investigation to include the communities that actually existed within the first century world, as opposed to those communities that, projected backward by modern scholarship, reflect simply the dogma and piety (or indeed the impiety) of our own times.” We must do this with the Old Testament too.

One atheist friend - who has been very critical of the God of the Old Testament — recently took a shot at me by pointing out that the Old Testament was produced during the Bronze Age. Of course, some of the Old Testament was also produced during the Iron Age, but his point is well taken. I would then suggest that to be fair, we need to read these ancient documents through the eyes of Bronze Aged men and women; we need to learn to think like a persons living in the Bronze Age.

This is a very difficult skill for a modern American to master. After all, we have trouble understanding how people in the developing world think; how much more difficult is it to put ourselves in the sandals of a man or woman living 4000 years ago. But if we are going to be fair in our evaluation of the Old Testament we need to learn how to do it, because as God began to reveal Himself to the human race he did so to a man who just happened to be living in the Bronze Age city of Ur.

This brings me to a second principle I want to discuss; the principle of progressive revelation. What I mean by this term is that God did not reveal Himself or His moral will all at once. And, as Paul observed, God does not impute sin to men when there is no Law. In other words, God only held men responsible for what they knew of the moral will of God at the time. So when we see men doing things for which later generations are condemned we need to put their actions in the context of what they knew at the time. We should also realize that though we can read the Bible very quickly, the actual moral revelation in it was revealed very gradually. Note also that each fresh revelation is built upon one that came before, and there are implications within each new revelation that often set the stage for the next.

Understanding these principles is key to understanding things like the laws concerning divorce, women, slavery and warfare, and I will be talking about these things more specifically in the future, but suffice it to say that many of the laws that cause us to raise and eyebrow looked incredibly progressive when viewed through the eyes of a Bronze Aged man or woman, and they represent enormous advances in the human race’s understanding of human worth and dignity.

Seen from this perspective we can see how God gradually revealed his moral will to the human race. This is why I compare Criticizing the God of the Old Testament to criticizing a teacher for not teaching calculus to first graders. Everyone knows that the foundation has to be laid first before the higher math can be taught. The same was true with God’s self revelation of His moral will; to paraphrase Jack Nicholson; we couldn’t handle the truth… at least not all at once.

 

The God of the Old Testament: Introduction — Part 2

Mark L. Carlton

For the Christian, the Key to understanding and interpreting the Old Testament is the New Testament; particularly the teaching, the example and the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. We believe, as the author of the New Testament book of Hebrews explained it, that, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son…”

The Greek which the author of the book of Hebrews uses here is important. It would not be improper to translate this verse, “God who at various time and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken His final word to us by his Son.”

In other words God’s progressive self revelation, which we discussed in last week’s “sermon,” reached its culmination in the Son. But more than this, having sent the Son, God has nothing left to reveal about Himself to the human race at this time. It would be fair to say that in the same way in which Jesus said, “it is finished,” when he breathed his last breath on the cross, so now God has said the same thing with regard to any further self-revelation.

Now this is not to say that we possess an exhaustive knowledge of God. We do not. There are things about Him that we do not and cannot understand. In I Corinthians 13, we are told that our knowledge is so incomplete that it is as though we are looking through “a dark glass that prevents us from seeing things clearly”. In fact, Paul compares our present, partial knowledge to the knowledge we had when we were children, which we laid aside when be became adults. In the same way, the knowledge we now have will someday be done away with when, what Paul refers to as “that which is perfect,” or complete, “comes.”

But this does not mean that we can know or say nothing for sure about God because our knowledge is incomplete. Francis Schaeffer explained it this way:

“What we claim as Christians is that, when all the facts are taken into consideration, the Bible gives us true knowledge although not exhaustive knowledge. Man as a finite creature is incapable of handling exhaustive knowledge anyway. There is an analogy here with our own communication between men; we communicate to each other truly, but we do not communicate exhaustively. A Christian holding the strongest possible view of inspiration still does not claim exhaustive knowledge at any point.”[i]

In the words of that great American theologian, Dirty Harry, “A man’s got to know his limitations,” and we need to especially keep our the limitations in mind whenever we set about the business of trying to understand what God has done, allowed, or planned.

But as childlike as our constructs may be in the sight of God and no matter how foolish they may appear to us in eternity, nevertheless, God gave us some valuable tools for gaining a measure of understanding when He sent his Son into the world. This is especially true when it comes to understanding perhaps the most important part of God’s former revelation, the Law (the Torah).

For Christians, Jesus’ use and interpretation of the Law is both definitive and instructive. In addition to being the Messiah, we believe that he was the prophet Moses spoken of when he said: “I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And it shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.” - Deuteronomy 18:18-19

So though we speak often about Jesus’ high priestly ministry, and we look forward to His return as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we pay special attention to what He said in His role as prophet.

Like all prophetic ministries, our Lord’s ministry had two aspects to it; foretelling things to come and forth-telling the word of God. It is this latter aspect of his prophetic ministry that we are focusing on in this message.

Jesus frequently quoted from the Law. But we’re focusing in this message on his interpretation of it, and by far His largest exposition of the Law is found in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew’s gospel gives us the fullest account of this sermon. And as we look at it we find several principles that will help us in exploring the Old Testament scriptures.

First, Jesus categorically endorsed the Law: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the law until all is accomplished.”

This leads to a question that is often asked; “Why, then, don’t you Christians observe all of the commandments?” The answer is twofold: First, certain aspects of the Law do not apply to Gentile believers since they are part-and-parcel of the covenant between God and Israel. This is made clear in Acts 15:1-29. Second, Jesus said that he came to fulfill rather than destroy the Law. I’m glad to say, He accomplished His mission. That’s what he was talking about when he cried out from the cross, “It is finished.” That is why the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom as he “gave up the ghost.” But all of this is a subject for another time.

In addition to endorsing the entire Old Testament, Jesus used the Sermon on the Mount to stress the fact that observing the Law is ultimately more than just outward conformity to a set of rules. As an expounder of the Law, Jesus placed his stress on the spirit rather than on the letter. He focused on the inner life — the heart - the true source of all our thoughts, motives and deeds. In another place He taught us that if we clean the inside of the cup the outside will take care of itself.

Another principle we glean from the teaching of Jesus is that not all the commandments are revelations of God’s moral will. Rather, some of the commandments are concession on the part of God because of “the hardness of [our] hearts.” We see this in his teaching on divorce in Matthew 19.

In this passage some Pharisees were arguing that the Law allowed them to divorce their wives, “for any cause at all” (v. 3). Jesus explained that this was not God’s desire. They countered by insisting that Moses commanded them only to “give her a certificate of divorce.” But Jesus explained that Moses made no such “command.” Rather, he was making a concession; “Because of the hardness of you heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it was not so.” (Matthew 19:

In my last “sermon” I stated that God did not reveal His moral will all at once, because “we weren’t ready for the truth.” Jesus is arguing the same thing in Matthew 19. In fact, that’s where I got it. But note that even after Jesus set forth the moral will of God concerning marriage in no uncertain terms, his disciples had trouble handling it: “The disciples said to Him, ‘If the relationship of the man with his wife is like that it is better not to marry’”(v. 10). I observe that His modern day disciples, and our culture as a whole, are still struggling to accept the revelation of God’s moral will as it pertains to marriage

This principle, which I refer to as the principle of permission, is important to keep in mind when reading the Old Testament, because we do find many things in the Old Testament that can only be understood in its light. For example, we will see men doing thing that which will later be condemned, and we will find things that seem to be in conflict with the fuller revelation of the moral will of God in the New Testament. But this should not surprise us if we understand the principle of progressive revelation and the principle of permission. God did permit certain things that were not in line with His moral will. It was a concession, because of the hardness of men’s hearts. But he mitigated them, as we will see, by regulating them.

There is one final principle I want to discuss in this sermon; Christians believe that Jesus was the Word made flesh, that He was the visible manifestation of all that God is. As I said at the beginning of this message, it is Jesus Himself who is God’s final revelation, and, as the author of Hebrews goes on to say, “And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature.”

On the night before His crucifixion, Philip asked: “Lord, show us the Father…” Jesus’ answer is hugely important: “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how do you say show us the Father. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me?”(John 14:9-10)

In the first chapter of his gospel, John adds this: “No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.” (John 1:1

The point of these passages is that the God of the Old Testament, when fully revealed and understood, looks just like Jesus. If, then, our understanding of God does not look like Jesus after we’ve read the Old Testament, then we’ve miscalculated something along the way; we need to go back to our desks and check our math.

So as we begin to read the revelation of God in the Hebrew Bible, a book that our Lord Himself endorsed, we are reading the record of a gradually unfolding divine self-revelation, which when finally concluded leaves us looking into the eyes of the Lord Jesus Christ. In our next “sermon we will begin our examination of that revelation.”

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[i]Genesis in Space and Time. Francis A. Schaeffer. P. 37

 

 

The God of the Old Testament: Part 3 — In the Beginning God…

By Mark L. Carlton

As Maria sang to the Trapp children in the musical, The Sound of Music, “Let’s start at the beginning, it’s a very fine place to start…when you learn to sing it’s Do, Ra, Me, and when we begin to discuss the God of the Old Testament it’s Genesis one two, three.” Seriously, based on the principle of progressive revelation which we’ve already discussed, we do need to start in Genesis.

A reader of my first sermon in this series questioned the principle of progressive revelation by pointing to Romans 1:20. In this verse Paul argues that the knowledge of God is a self evident observation. I responded by explaining that I certainly agree with the reader’s point, and I added that Romans 2:14-15 indicate that a basic moral sense is also part of the standard intellectual equipment God has installed in every human being. This intuitive knowledge of God and his moral will is part of what theologians refer to as “General Revelation.”

General Revelation is an interesting subject. C.S. Lewis wrote about it in Mere Christianity, and one of the authors I have recommended, J. Budziszewski, has done and excellent job talking about our moral sense. I too have written several articles on this subject, but this study has to do with what theologians call, Special Revelation, the things we have learned about God through His progressive self-disclosure to mankind. The record of this divine self-disclosure is contained in Scripture

Now some might want me to address the subject of scripture at this point. It is an interesting and important topic, and perhaps I will address it in a future series; but for the present I am going to defer that discussion so we can begin our study of the God of the Old Testament.

Let us start with the first verse of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” In this simple sentence the Bible presents us with three great concepts: (1) the beginning, (2) God, (3) creation. Each of these concepts is profoundly important; so much so that I will be dealing with each of them in separate messages. But in this message I will be primarily dealing with the concept of the beginning, and then I will move on to a discussion of one the things the idea of a beginning implies about God.

The Beginning

Most people do not recognize how absolutely unique this idea of a beginning is. To appreciate its uniqueness we need to understand that none of the other creation myths that we know of - and we know of hundreds - posits a beginning, and this would include the modern “scientific” creation myth, at least until recent times.

It is a general practice among skeptics to look for similarities between the Genesis 1 and other ancient creation stories. On the basis of these similarities, critics argue that Moses borrowed from already existing pagan sources to construct his account of creation. But what the critics generally fail to notice are the differences in the stories. Perhaps the biggest and most important difference is this idea of a beginning, this idea that the heavens and earth themselves are not eternal.

No one else believed this when Genesis was written. All of the other creation accounts circulating at the time assumed that the universe was eternal, and all of the other creators made things out of pre-existing stuff. This was also the view of modern science until Big Bang forced them to change their story. But from the beginning the Bible asserts that the stuff is not eternal. In other words, the Bible says that God made the dirt.

Genesis 1:1 is not the only place we find this idea. We find it throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. We even find it in the earliest Christian creeds. Take, for example, the first sentence of the Apostles’ Creed: “We believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”

What makes all of this remarkable is that no one else in the ancient world believed in a beginning! But the Bible taught it, and those who took the Bible at face value continued to believe it, even in the scientific age when the modern scientific consensus agreed with the wisdom of the ancient world in its insistence that the universe had always been there.

But now, in what Dinesh D’Souza refers to as, “a stunning confirmation of the Genesis,” modern science has discovered that “Not only did the universe have a beginning in space time, but the origin of the universe was also the beginning for space time. Space time did not exist prior to the universe. If you accept that everything that has a beginning has a cause, then the material universe had a material or spiritual cause. This spiritual cause brought the universe into existence using none of the laws of physics. The creation of the universe was, in the quite literal meaning of the term, a miracle.”[i]

Writing in WIRED Magazine in December 2002, Gregg Easterbrook echoes D’Souza’s point: “All this stuff - enough to form 50 billion galaxies, maybe fantastically more - is thought to have emerged…in less than a second, from a point with no physical dimensions. Set aside the many competing explanations for big bang; something made an entire cosmos out of nothing. It is this realization - that something transcendent started it all - which has hard-science types…using terms like, ‘miracle.’”[ii]

Commenting on modern science’s annoying habit of saying things like “somethingmade the entire cosmos, and their attempts to figure out how it all happened, D’Souza quips, “perhaps the better question is not how, but who? Indeed! especially since it took the human race about 4000 years to figure that Moses was right in the first place.

Arno Penzias, who won a portion of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the cosmic background radiation that proved that the universe had a beginning, understands this: “The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted had I had nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms and the Bible as a whole.”[iii] But this leads us to an intriguing question; how did Moses and the other Biblical authors know there was a beginning when no one else did?

Astronomer, Robert Jastrow caught the irony, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak. As he pulls himself over the final rock he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”[iv]Actually, they have been sitting there for millennia, but who’s counting?

 

Transcendence

There is something else I want to draw your attention to before I end this sermon, a concept implied by the concept of a beginning; transcendence.

Gregg Easterbrook was correct when he stated that “something transcendent started it all.” It is important to note that only the Bible posits a beginning, because of this, no other religion has ever posited a transcendent God.

One theologian has suggested that the first chapter of Genesis is a polemic against the then prevailing religious systems, pantheism and polytheism. His point is well taken, and I will get back to it. But before we do so I want to point out that the idea of a transcendent God provides us with an answer to the question so many have used as an excuse not to believe; “Who created God?”

As D’Souza points out, transcendence puts God outside of the sequence of cause and effect in the same way that an author stands outside of the novel he writes. If a new character or event happens in the sequence of the novel the reader is justified in asking, “Where did he or she come from?” or “What caused that to happen?” But no character would ask, “Where did the author of this novel come from?” because the author transcends the novel he has created. In the same way, transcendence places God outside the sequence, outside of time and space, outside of the rules of cause and effect, even outside the physical laws that govern the “novel.” This is what it means to be transcendent.

Also, the transcendence of God is another of those concepts that leave us asking; how did the Biblical authors know about transcendence? Gregg Easterbrook pointed out that we now know the universe had to have had a transcendent cause (natural or supernatural), but this was certainly not known when Moses wrote Genesis. In fact, scientists didn’t know it a hundred years ago themselves.

When all is said and done there are only two possible explanations for the existence of the universe: a transcendent natural cause, or a transcendent supernatural cause. But transcendence itself is no longer negotiable. Isn’t it interesting, then, that before anyone knew that transcendence would be necessary to explain the existence of the cosmos, the Bible was talking about a transcendent God? Isn’t it interesting that great Christian thinkers like Augustine were musing that time itself must be part of creation 1000 years before Einstein? And isn’t it interesting that no other religious system has ever talked about the existence of a transcendent God?

But let us leave all of this aside for now and go back to the idea that the first chapter of Genesis was originally intended as a polemic against polytheism and pantheism. I note, first of all, that this argument has been greatly strengthened when modern science confirmed that the universe had a beginning and a transcendent cause. What’s more, the ideas of a beginning and a transcendent God have important ramifications for any honest seeker, because it narrows our options by eliminating all but three: (1) a transcendent natural cause (2) some supernatural causation we are unaware of, (3) the God of the Bible.

Now as to possibility number 2; some may argue that one can imagine all sorts of transcendent supernatural causes other than the God of the Bible (gods, fairies, orbiting teapots, etc). This is certainly true. John Calvin observed that the heart of man is an idol factory; thus, the options open to human imagination are truly limitless. But a study of history of religion reveals that none by the Biblical faiths have ever proposed a transcendent anything or anyone. In fact, science only rewrote its myth after it could no longer deny Big Bang. So while the world’s religions might contain much wisdom, none of them can be telling us anything about the God who actually exists, because they know nothing of Him.

Please, do not interpret what I just said as a put down of other religions. That was not my intent. I am only saying what they themselves admit. Let me explain what I am saying. Begin with the assumption that these other religions are not false, but true in their basic claims. None of these religious systems claim to be able to connect us with a transcendent god.

Let us take the Hindu religion as an example. Hindus claim that through meditation and other disciplines, we can achieve a state of consciousness in which we can experience “oneness” with the universe. Let us assume that this claim is true. Certainly neuroscience has shown that Indian Gurus experience remarkable levels of brain inactivity during meditation. These altered states are clear indications that something extraordinary is happening; so it is entirely possible that such a person is indeed experiencing a connectedness with every particle in the universe at an elemental level. So the Hindu religion might even have something to say to us in the area of quantum physics. But even if all of this is true, Hindus do not claim that they can connect us with the transcendent cause or creator of the universe. On the contrary, Hindus do not even acknowledge such things.

It is here that the discoveries of modern science converge with the scriptures to declare that whatever else the Hindu religion may able to do for us, it cannot take us to the creator of the universe. It does not even claim to be able to do so. To the Hindu, God and the universe are one and the same, so if the universe ceased to exist so would god. Add to this the fact that the cosmology of Hinduism posits an eternal universe and its weakness as a comprehensive explanation for reality becomes evident, because we now know that the universe has not always been. So if the universe has a supernatural cause we are going to have go someplace other than the Hindu religion to find it or Him.

Conversely, we can say that if there is a supernatural causation, and if the human race has any knowledge of it, then the only possible repository of that knowledge must be the Bible, because it is the only religious source that presents us with a transcendent cause. Remarkably, it was the first source to do so.

This then brings us back to the same question we asked in the beginning; how could Moses and the other writers of the Bible have known about transcendence? Why did the writers of scripture come up with this concept when no one else did? How indeed? Their explanation was that God told them. It’s certainly a possibility worth considering.

Now I know that materials/naturalist scientific theorists are diligently seeking for a naturalistic explanation for the beginning. I understand what they are doing and the sense of philosophical necessity that drives them. But my purpose here is not to argue against all of the competing naturalistic theories for the cause of Big Bang, but to talk about the God of the Old Testament.

I am also sure that some would prefer that I launch right into a discussion of the things the Old Testament claims God has said or done, and I will be doing this in future sermons, but I begin with transcendence because I am convinced that what God has done will only make sense in light of who God is. And so I start with these things we learn about God in the first sentence in the Bible: When there was no universe, no time, space or mater, the transcendent God was in continuous existence. This is where a true understanding of God begins.

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[i]What’s So Great About Christianity, Dinesh D’Souza, p. 116

[ii]The New Convergence, Gregg Easterbrook, WIRED Magazine Issue 10.12, December 2002

[iii]What’s So Great about Christianity,” Dinesh D’Souza, p. 124

[iv] Ibid, p. 124

The God of the Old Testament: Part 4 — Assuming There is a God

By Mark L. Carlton

At the beginning of my last message I pointed out that in the very first verse of the Bible we are presented with three great concepts: (1) the beginning; (2) God; and (3) creation. Most of my last sermon was devoted to the first of these concepts, the beginning, and an important implication drawn from it, the idea of transcendence. Both of these ideas are repeated throughout scripture and as we pointed out, this was quite unusual because no other religion spoke of such things, and until recent times none but Biblical literalists believed in such things. But Big Bang changed that.

Now we know that the universe we live in had a beginning. We also know that it had a transcendent natural or a transcendent supernatural cause. I have argued in a previous post that the supernatural cause is the only one on the table right now because matter, nature, and its physical laws as we know them did not exist prior to Big Bang. Since none of these things existed until Big Bang and since they are the effects of Big Bang, it is a logical absurdity to say that the effect could be its own cause, especially in light of the fact that the effect did not exist “in the beginning.” So rather than saying a transcendent natural cause is one possibility for the existence of the universe, it would be more accurate to say that the only two options are (1) a transcendent supernatural or (2) a transcendent non-supernatural cause.

In fairness, I also need to acknowledge that many cosmologists are currently looking for a non-supernatural cause, not because the evidence demands that the universe have one, but because of their a priori commitment to non-supernatural causation. And so there are a number of non-supernatural hypotheses on the table, and some of them are supported by testable scientific theories (theories that make predictions that can potentially be observed).

One of these non-supernatural theories may pan out, but right now there is no observable evidence to support a non-supernatural explanation for the origin of the universe. Nor is there a viable non-material explanation as to how lifeless matter could form itself into such things as a self-replicating cell, or even a single strand of DNA, for that mater, let alone the wide variety of plant and animal life we observe on this planet.

So while we are open to the possibility that science may yet discover a non-supernatural cause for Big Bang many of us see the absence of evidence as evidence of absence. Given then that a transcendent supernatural cause is still on the table many of us see a transcendent God as the most logically consistent answer to the questions of origins, both of the universe and life. In fact, many of us view a transcendent God as the only adequate answer to these questions. Uniquely among the world’s religious literatures, the fourth word in the Bible introduces us to such a God: “In the beginning God”.

The first thing I would draw your attention to is the fact that the Bible does not set out to prove the existence of this God, it assumes it. New atheists, following the lead of Antony Flew (from his days as an atheist), argue that in the absence of affirmative proof for His existence we should start with the assumption that there is no God. I have no problem with them taking this position, though I will argue that it is not the most logical starting place, as long as they acknowledge that it is just an assumption.

You see, both the theist and the atheist begin the process of analysis with an assumption they cannot prove. The theist assumes that a transcendent God started it all, and the atheist assumes that a transcendent something other than God started it all. But neither can prove their starting assumption.

There is nothing either reasonable or unreasonable about starting with an unproven assumption. In fact, it is the way modern science works. You start with a hypothesis, by definition an unproven assumption, you then formulate theories with testable predictions; then you begin to observe to see if the evidence supports your predictions and validates your theory.

For example, a person who believes in the God of the Bible would predict a finite universe. He or she would predict that it began in a moment from (apparent) nothing, predicable and discernable laws, order and complexity — even at the sub-atomic level — and evidence consistent with design (note, evidence consistent with design is not proof of a designer, but it would be something that one would expect to find if the universe has a designer). So far, the observable evidence is consistent with the predictions of the theistic theory.

On the other hand, the materialist would expect to find an eternal universe, randomness and disorder, and an absence of the sort of things we would associate with real design. So far the evidence is not terribly supportive of materialist’s predictions. In fact, while atheism is still on the table, materialism has been all but refuted. Remember, there was no material until Big Bang; and so far no one has offered an explanation as to how the material produced by Big Bang could be its own cause let alone how it managed to arrange itself into the highly complex forms in which we find it; so materialism as a reasonable explanation for the universe is not longer an option, and it validity as an explanation for the origins of life is actually just an idea in search of a mechanism.

So the Bible’s assumption of God is not an illogical starting point. On the contrary, it is a starting point that makes testable predictions, and has observable evidence that is consistent with the theory.

I would also respectfully disagree with the atheist who suggests that not believing in God is the logical most starting assumption. I say this for several reasons. The first has to do with a well established scientific and logical principle, Occam’s razor. I found a nice explanation of this principle on the website of the Physics Department of the University of California, Riverside:

“When a new set of facts requires the creation of a new theory the process is far from the orderly picture often presented in books. Many hypotheses are proposed, studied, rejected. Researchers discuss their validity (sometimes quite heatedly) proposing experiments which will determine the validity of one or the other, exposing flaws in their least favorite ones, etc. Yet, even when the unfit hypotheses are discarded, several options may remain, in some cases making the exact same predictions, but having very different underlying assumptions. In order to choose among these possible theories a very useful tool is what is called Ockham’s razor.

Ockham’s Razor is the principle proposed by William of Ockham in the fourteenth century: “Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate”, which translates as “entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily”.

In many cases this is interpreted as “keep it simple”, but in reality the Razor has a more subtle and interesting meaning. Suppose that you have two competing theories which describe the same system, if these theories have different predictions than [sic] it is a relatively simple matter to find which one is better: one does experiments with the required sensitivity and determines which one gives the most accurate predictions.”[i]

Again I note that there are two competing theories of origins. The theistic theory makes predictions, and the observable evidence is consistent with those predictions. The non-supernatural theories also make predictions too, but so far the observable evidence does not support these theories. What’s more, the theories being proposed violate Occam’s razor through unnecessary multiplication. For example, one of the non-supernatural explanations posits infinite universes. Not only is this unsupported by observable evidence, it is impossible to verify through observation. So is it really a scientific theory at all, or is it just an attempt by certain individuals to escape the uncomfortable alternative, God?

This leads me to my second reason for suggesting that the assumption of a God is a better starting place than the assumption that He is not. This argument is also premised on the fact that there is presently no evidence for a non-supernatural cause. There are, to be sure, hypotheses and theories a-plenty, but so far no confirmation of them. In contrast, the observable universe is consistent with the theistic theory. So why would anyone argue that the most logical starting point is the theory that has no observable evidence to support it?

Admittedly the theistic explanation is not proven, but it the evidence is consistent with its predictions, and as the article on the U.C. Riverside website pointed out, “if these theories have different predictions [then] it is a relatively simple matter to find which one is better: one does experiments with the required sensitivity and determines which one gives the most accurate predictions.” [ii] Since the theistic explanation has made accurate predictions, and since the jury is still out on the non-supernatural side of the debate — actually, the jury hasn’t even begun deliberations yet because the investigators are still looking for evidence to make a case — it seems to me that the best starting assumption is the supernatural one.

There is a final reason that I think the a transcendent God is a better starting assumption than it’s opposite, and that has to do with the fact that it is the explanation of origins that most naturally suggests itself to a rational human being.

The history of atheism is a short history. As Richard Dawkins pointed out, it was only with the advent of Darwin’s theory of evolution that it became possible to be “an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Throughout the ages men and women in every culture have observed the beauty and complexity of the world around them and assigned it to a divine causation. It is interesting to note that until relatively modern times no one was able to come up with an alternate explanation. Some new atheists have even acknowledged this and sought to explain it on the basis of evolutionary psychology.

So, what’s my point? My point here is that we ought to be somewhat careful in discarding the wisdom of every age and culture save our own lest we be guilty of the twin fallacies of euro-centrism and chronological snobbery. We ought also to be slow in abandoning what I have referred to as “The Common Sense” (see my articles on Christian epistemology in the archives).

My favorite poet, Carl Sandburg, spoke of the hubris of such a civilization in his great poem, Four Preludes on Plaything of the Wind. This statement was inscribed on the walls of its wind-blown ruins:

“We are the greatest city,

The greatest nation:

Nothing like us ever was.”

(In our next post we will continue to discuss the concept of God. Specifically, we will be discussing what we can learn about God from the Hebrew word used by Moses in Genesis 1:1. We will also be beginning a discussion of the third great concept, creation.)

 

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[i]Department of Physics, University of California Riverside — http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node10.html

[ii] Department of Physics, University of California Riverside — http://phyun5.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node10.html

 

The God of the Old Testament — Part 5

The fourth word of the Bible introduces us to God; One who is in continuous existence in the beginning, One Who is the cause of the beginning; and One Who by the very title with which He is introduced is different and more glorious than all others who are called “gods.”

Theologian, Bruce Waltke, has said, I think correctly, that one of Moses’ purposes in writing the first chapter of Genesis, perhaps his primary purpose, was to produce a polemic against the other religious systems of the ancient world; systems of thought the children of Israel would have been familiar with from their 450 year stay in Egypt; and systems of thought that would continue to be a snare to them in days to come. The systems of religious thought I am referring to are polytheism and pantheism.

All of the nations around them had their gods. These gods had many names but a title that all of the Semitic nations shared in common was, El. El was generally not the actual name of the particular deities to whom it was applied. It was a title though it was also used as a personal reference to a personal god. For example, Baal was the name of the principle El of the Phoenicians, but when his followers spoke of him they might refer to him as god in the same way that we use the term God when referring to the God of Israel.

What then, does “El” mean? El was used of someone with great power, someone to be greatly feared. It could be applied to an angel or even a man — such as a human king, a judge or a governor — but most frequently it was applied to the various deities of the ancient near east. In polytheism it designates the deity that supposedly has power over various things; rain, the sea, etc, and who is to be feared because of his great power.

But it is interesting to note that when the Hebrews used El it was linked with epithets. According to the Theological Workbook of the Old Testament: “Indeed, as we study the word as used in Scripture, we must conclude that it is almost always qualified with words or descriptions which further define the word.” This leads A.B. Davidson to conclude that these qualifications both elevate the concept of El in Scripture and distinguish the term as used biblically from others who might be so named (A.B. Davidson, Theology of the Old Testament. P.61)”[i] Some examples of this would be: El Shaddai, (Almighty God), El ‘elyon (God of gods), and one of my favorites, El Mistatēr (the God who hides Himself) i.e. known only by self-revelation.

As we survey the Old Testament we will see that the names God uses to describe himself (or that others use of Him) will be part of the way in which the God Who hides Himself is revealed first to Israel and then through the chosen nation to the rest of us (Psalm 103:7; Romans 3:1-2). But all of this will come later because when Moses introduces us to God he does not use the title “El,” rather, he uses its plural, Elohim.

This will be the most common way in which El is used of God in the Old Testament. In Moses’ polemic it is easy to understand why he uses the plural (it is why the other O.T. writers do it as well). The use of the plural is used to intensify and magnify the concept of God and to distinguish the God of Israel from all others called “El,” be they the so called gods of the nations, angelic beings, or men. Moses is saying that this was One who existed in the beginning is the great El, in fact, the only El from Whom everything else owes its existence.

I believe there is something else intended by the term, Elohim, which Moses and the prophets after him may not have fully understood. In using the term Elohim to speak of the one true God (El Ehad) we have an allowance for something that will be developed more fully as the process of self-revelation unfolds, and that is a hint that the one God who existed in the beginning is unlike all beings in more than his power. Here we have the first indication that part of the uniqueness of the one true God is that He is a mult-personal being (later we will learn that He is a tri-personal being)

While not demanded by the term Elohim a multi-personal deity is allowed by it. We see hints of it in such things as this statement by God later in the chapter, “And God said, Let us make man in Our image and according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). It is allowed by the use of ‘ehad, in the shema (Hear, Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one (‘ehad). ‘ehad, is a Hebrew word for “one” that stresses unity while recognizing diversity within that oneness. For example, it is used in Genesis 2:24 of the oneness between the man and the woman” The two shall become ‘ehad (one) flesh.

The idea of a tri-personal God finds its fullest Old Testament development in a passage that anticipates the New Testament’s doctrine of the tri-personality of God, Isaiah 48:12-16:

“Listen to me, O Jacob, even Israel who I called; I am He, I am the first, I am the last. Surely My hand founded the earth and My right had spread out the heavens; When I called them, they stand together. Assemble, all of you and listen! Whom among them has declared these things? Yahweh loves him; he will carry out His good pleasure on Babylon and His arm will be against the Chaldeans. I even I have called him, I have brought him, and He will make his ways successful. Come near to Me, listen to this: From the first I have not spoken in secret, from the time it took place I was there. And now the Lord Elohim has sent Me, and his Spirit.”

Here we clearly see the creator God speaking since he begins this paragraph by declaring that He is the One Who created the heavens and the earth, and then later, the Creator says, “Elohim sent Him and His Spirit.” What are we to make of this? I would suggest that the tri-personality of God offers the best explanation.

In summary; Moses introduces us to Elohim, a God greater in majesty and power than all others to whom the term El is applied. Moreover, there is uniqueness to Elohim’s being. He is a being like no other. He is indivisible unity in His essence, yet He is mult-personal in His being. We are not yet told how many persons form this indivisible unity we call God, but by Genesis 1:26 it becomes clear that it is more than one. It is this One — Moses goes on to say — Who created the heavens and earth in the beginning (We’ll discuss this third great idea found in the first verse of the Bible, creation, in next week’s sermon).

Also implied by the term Elohim (and it too is developed more fully elsewhere), is the idea of holiness. As we have discussed, the use of Elohim was intended to distinguish or separate the God of Israel from any other “el.” He is not just another el, as though He has peers. He is other than them. He is also separate also from that which He will create, since He existed before it, and He is other than any other kind of being, in that he is tri-personal. He is, other. This idea of separation or otherness, is the basic meaning of the term, holy. Holy means, separate. The prophet Isaiah gave us perhaps the most beautiful expression of this concept in Isaiah chapter six. In this passage the Seraphim are seen covering their eyes to shield them from God’s glory as they cry out to one another, not just that Yahweh is holy, but that He is holy, holy, holy.

It is interesting to note that God has revealed His holiness to us before He revealed His love. Sadly, this concept of divine holiness has been all but forgotten. No longer is God the One before Whom the Seraphim veil their eyes. These days God is spoken of as if he were one of us, and we speak as though we consider Him our peer, and we dare even to set ourselves up as His judges. Earlier generations would have shuddered at our hubris.

I would suggest that if we are going to rightly understand the God of the Old Testament, and if we are going to judge him fairly - and if we are going to place Him in the dock and make ourselves His judges, let us at least strive for fairness — then we need to rediscover this lost concept of Divine holiness, because it is to God as blood is to the human body. He is replete with it.

Take for example just one aspect of His holiness, his otherness as it relates to knowledge:

“My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,” Declares Yahweh, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” - Isaiah 55:8-9

The skeptic who wants to talk about God may or may not be ready for that conversation. If s/he does not understand, at least in theory, that if the universe was created, then a God capable of doing it must possess knowledge, wisdom and power beyond our comprehension. Thus it should not surprise us if he does or allows things to happen that are beyond our comprehension. It is only when a person is able to understand (again in theory) who s/he is in relation to such a Being that s/he is able to converse intelligently about the God of the Bible; because the Bible declares at the outset that such a God is the One who actually exists.

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[i]R. Laird Harris; Gleason Archer, Bruce Waltke, The Theological Workbook of the Old Testament

The God of the Old Testament: Part 6 — The Implications of Creation

We come in this message to the third of the great ideas broached in the first verse of the Bible; creation. Specifically, the Bible insists that there was a beginning of the universe and that it marked the beginning of God’s creative activity and His subsequent participation in time space history.

The subject of creation is a fascinating subject, and an apologetic series on creation would be fun to do (perhaps I will attempt it at some point), but I want to be careful not to become sidetracked and loose sight of the purpose of this series. The purpose of this series is to learn about the God of the Old Testament so that we will be better able to understand Him, and in understanding Him, discover that His will is, to use Paul’s words, “good, acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2). So rather than focusing on creation per se, I want to focus on the implications inherent in the idea of a God who is the creator of all things.

So, what is implied about God from the idea of creation? To answer this question I would ask you once again, just for argument’s sake, to assume that the universe and everything in it owes its existence to a creator. If this is what happened, what must be true of such a God?

I asked this question to a group of young people at a Bible study Sunday evening. The group consisted of my wife, Pam, our youth pastor, one college Junior, two high school seniors, and a freshman. I was really testing a statement we read in Romans 1:20. In this text Paul argues that everyone has some knowledge of God. He states that we derive this knowledge intuitively through observing creation, the things God has made, and that because of this intuitive knowledge everyone is responsible to the Creator.

Specifically, Paul argues that the creation is like a silent sermon that everyone hears. The silent sermon, Paul says, is declaring certain things about God; His invisible attributes and divine power.

So to test this I asked the group to forget everything else they have learned about God from the Bible, and assume that they only know one thing for sure, that God created the universe and everything in it. Then answer this question: If God created everything then He must be_________________________.

I was very impressed with the answers we got. It did not take long for the group to agree that a God capable of creating the universe must posses knowledge and wisdom beyond anything we can understand to have conceived of the universe in the first place, and He must have power beyond anything we can imagine to have produced it. They also agreed that such a God must have had some plan or purpose in creating it, and a will, since He chose to bring it into existence. Another offered that the creator must be very creative, a lover of color, diversity, beauty, and imaginative.

One suggested curiosity. I wasn’t expecting that particular answer, but his point was interesting. I defined it as the desire to do more than just conceive of the universe, but the desire to actually bring it into being, to experience it.

Another pointed out that a creator God must be a God who differentiates, who separates things from one another, a God of distinctions. Another suggested that God must be kind. She based this on the nature of the food that has been provided for us, and the experience of eating it. We talked about the fact that eating could have been the same sort of act as eliminating waste - purely mechanical. Instead, it was pleasurable because the food provided for us is varied and tasty, and we have been created with the ability to enjoy the many different flavors.

Another looked at the mates that higher level creatures enjoy. We talked about the fact that there is relationship, and that we ourselves are relational, and it was suggested that if we are created beings then the God who created us must be relational too.

We could have listed many other things, but I also wanted them to look at a couple of passages in Romans in which Paul points out a couple of other things that must be true if God created all things. The passage I am referring to is Romans 9:19-21.

In the ninth chapter of Romans Paul is arguing against a proto Anti-Semitism that was beginning to rear its ugly head among the Gentiles in the church in Rome (see my articles on Christian anti-Semitism in the archives). The Gentile believers were apparently upset with the claim that the Jews were the chosen people. They did not believe this was just (Romans 9:14). Paul countered by pointing out that God has a right to do whatever he wants to do. If for example, He wants to raise up a man like Pharaoh just to demonstrate his power He has a perfect right to do so because the mercy is not a human right, it is a Divine prerogative.

In making this argument Paul anticipates that his Gentile readers will protest. But his response is, “Who are you to answer back to God.” Then he appeals to one of the implications of creation, “Has not the potter right over the clay?”

I can relate to what Paul is saying here because I am a sculptor. As the creator I have the absolute right to do what I want with my clay and what I make from it. Just recently I was taken to task for the way in which I destroyed a piece I was unhappy with (because it didn’t win a competition). Some who had seen it formed an emotional bond with it and were shocked and distressed when I tore it apart, rolled it together, and subsequently dropped it in a dumpster.

I admit I was insensitive and a bit of a bad sport to destroy it the way I did, but in the final analysis, I was the creator and I had the absolute right to do whatever I wanted to do with what I had made.

Fortunately, God is not as capricious as I was, but the point is the same. It’s called sovereignty. It is the idea, involved in the idea of a creator that I think we are most uncomfortable with, whether we are believers or not. It is the idea that God, having made everything, has the absolute right to do whatever he wants to do with what He made. He has the right to do this whenever He wants and however He wants. It means he’s in charge and we are not. The book of Revelation tells us that God is worshiped for it in heaven, as the hosts of heaven sing:

“Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they existed and were created.” — Revelation 4:11

If there is one concept in the Bible that rankles us it is this concept of Divine Sovereignty. One of our young people expressed as much as we discussed the implications of it. It is not that we have problem with someone being in charge and being able to do whatever they want to do, whenever, wherever and with whatever, it is just that we have that job reserved for ourselves. We are uncomfortable with creature status. We would prefer to have and prerogatives and privileges that rightfully belong to the creator. We want God’s job! We want autonomy! We want to be the masters of our fate and the captains of our souls…but creation leaves us both dependent and responsible.

We are made of the dust of the earth and given enough time we will return to it. In the end, gravity wins. But if there is a creator He is by rights the one who calls the shots and we are creatures subject to His will. O how we hate that concept! No wonder we suppress the truth that we cannot not know when we look at creation.

I sometimes wonder if some skeptic’s real problem is not with the idea of creation but with the concept of a creator. If so then we believers have more in common with them than they realize, because it is a hard concept for us too.

 

The God of the Old Testament: Part 7 — Creation   II

I have hesitated to get into a discussion of my view of creation, lest I be sidetracked and lose sight of the focus of this series, an examination and defense of the God of the Old Testament.  But upon reflection, I think I should spend some time on my interpretation of Genesis 1-3, since I am going to be drawing lessons concerning God and man from it.

 Before I share my understanding of Genesis, let me say a few things about the interpretations that have historically been offered by both Christians and Jews for these chapters.  I do this become many atheists, particularly new atheists; try to put us believers in a box by forcing us to defend one particular interpretation of Genesis.  They seem to think that if we take the Biblical account of creation seriously then we have to defend a strictly literal, young earth creationism.  If we offer a more nuanced view then we are accused of retrofitting, or trying to make the Biblical data fit with the findings of modern science. 

But the fact is, Genesis 1-3, like many other portions of scripture lends itself to a number of interpretations.   According to the Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, the late Pinchas Lapide, there is a rabbinic axiom that states, “In each Bible word there are 70 interpretations.”  [i]  All one has to do to confirm this maxim is to look at the many ways the Genesis account of creation has been interpreted down through the ages.

When it comes to the first chapter of Genesis and the seven days of creation, it is interesting to note that an insistence on a strictly literal reading of the text is of relatively recent origins.   Many of the early church fathers held views that included literal and allegorical interpretations of Genesis.  Origen, not one of my favorite theologians, held that the physical world was literally the creation of God, but as with most things, he did not take the days of creation literally.   More importantly, Augustine of Hippo believed that the point of Genesis one is that God created the physical realm, but he did not take the seven days literally, instead he believed that the days of creation should be understood as categories.   he Wikipedia article on creationism (which actually does a very good job of explaining the history of creationism) says this about Thomas Aquinas : “Like Augustine, [Aquinas] asserted the need to hold the truth of Scripture without wavering while cautioning “that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation, only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false; lest holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.”[ii]

What was true in Christianity was also true in Judaism.  For example, Philo believed that creation happened in a single moment, and that the six days of creation meets a need for order that accords with the perfect number, seven.   Abraham ibn Ezra was a creationist, and yet he did not believe in taking an overly literal view of Genesis, and the great Rabi, Moses Maimonides explicitly states that “parts of Genesis 1-3 cannot be taken literally,”[iii]and all this was said in a pre-scientific age. 

So there have been many different interpretations of Genesis, but in spite of the diversity of thought, there is unanimity on two issues:  (1) The universe had a beginning and (2) God created it.

Once again referring to the Wikipedia article, “Creationism covers a spectrum of beliefs…most people labeled “creationists” are those who object to specific parts of science for religious reasons; however many (if not most) people who believe in a divine act of creation do not categorically reject those parts of science.”[iv]  I would word this differently.  I am one of those whom the author(s) of this article would say “objects to specific parts of science.”  I have no problem at all with science.  However, I do reject certain unproven scientific theories. 

To help you visualize the wide range of creationist views held by Bible Believing Christian (and Jews), the look at the following chart. Wikipedia is very helpful:

Comparison of major creationist views
	Humanity	Biological species	Earth	Universe
Young Earth creationism	Directly created by God.	Directly created by God. Macroevolution does not occur.	10,000 years old. Reshaped by global flood.	10,000 years old.
Gap creationism	Directly created by God.	Directly created by God. Macroevolution does not occur.	Scientifically accepted age. Reshaped by global flood.	Scientifically accepted age.
Progressive creationism	Directly created by God (based on primate anatomy).	Direct creation + evolution. No single common ancestor.	Scientifically accepted age. No global flood.	Scientifically accepted age.
Intelligent design	N/A	Divine intervention at some point in the past, as evidenced by what they call “irreducible complexity”	Some adherents claim the existence of Earth is the result of divine intervention	Some adherents believe in the teleological argument, at the existence of Universe is the result of divine intervention
Theisticevolution	Evolution from primates.	Evolution from single common ancestor.	Scientifically accepted age. No global flood.	Scientifically accepted age.

As the chart reflects, these are the major creationist views.  The chart is not completely accurate in every respect, and there are other views not shown on this chart.  But the reader can see there are a variety of opinions, and each of them is consistent with a high view of scripture.

I am an Old Earth creationist.  In addition, I am what the maker of this chart would refer to as the gap creationist (I prefer to my position as the Summary Statement theory, but The Gap theory works fine).  I also am firmly committed to intelligent design.  The former explains my interpretation of Genesis one, the latter explains my view of the universe (I question whether intelligent design should even be called creationism since it is agnostic on the identity of the designer.  In other words, ID is not necessarily a defense of Biblical creationism).     

The description of Gap creationism provided by the Wikipedia chart is fairly accurate.  The definition of intelligent design is, in my estimation, remarkably simplistic and inadequate.  I think every view of creation would in some measure hold to intelligent design.  But to go into any further analysis would head this discussion in a direction that is far removed from where I want it to go.  But so that you will know where I am coming from, let me give you a brief explanation of my view. 

When I read the first chapter of Genesis I note that there are no time indicators in the text.  In other words, we are told that the universe had a beginning but we are not told when it was.  Nor are we told how long it was between the creation of all things in the beginning and God’s specific creative work with regard to this planet.  So since the text is not specific, there may be a significant amount of time between the creation of the universe and God’s specific creative work described in the rest of the chapter.   I believe there was.  Also, note that the text tells us only what the world looked like at the point when God began His creative work; it does not tell us how long it existed in that state before God went to work.   Moreover, it does not tell us if chaos was its original condition or whether something happened to put it in that state.  Importantly, there are many things that Moses does not tell us.

I take the days of creation literally, but to me they can only be reconciled with other things we know to be true if we determine the point from which the action is being viewed.   I believe there is good textual proof for believing that we are viewing the action from the surface of the earth.  Viewed from this angle the creative work of God, though miraculous, makes sense, at least to me.   It is particularly helpful in explaining the two big problems in chapter one; plants without sunlight, and the “creation” of the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day of creation.

If I am correct, and the creative work of God is being viewed from the surface of the earth, then this is how I would understand the scene unfolding; the darkness spoken of in verse two  was not a universal darkness, but the condition of the earth’s atmosphere at the time God began His special work on this planet.   I envision an atmosphere so full of particulate matter that the light of the sun, stars and the reflected light from the moon, could not penetrate it.   Then, on the first day of creation, at the command of God, the atmosphere began to clear so that the light of the sun could be seen on the surface of the earth.   That the Sun was already created seems obvious to me because the text says that the morning and even were the first day.  This suggests that the earth is rotating on its axis toward some light source.  The sun would seem to be the leading candidate.

During the next few days as God brought other things quickly into being, the atmosphere continued to clear.  On day four the atmosphere was clear enough to see the sun, moon and stars.   Hebrew scholar and theologian, Gleason Archer, believes that the days of creation represent stages of creation rather than literal days, but he does agree that our English texts, which say that God created the stars, is actually referring to a prior act of creation:

“Genesis 1:14-19 reveals that in the fourth creative stage God parted the cloud cover enough for direct sunlight to fall on earth and for accurate observation of the movements of the sun, moon and stars to take place.  Verse 16 should not be understood as indicating the creation of the heavenly bodies for the first time on the fourth creative day; rather it inform us that the sun, moon and stars created on Day one as the source of light had been placed in their appointed places by God with a view to their eventually functioning as indicators of time to terrestrial observers.  The Hebrew verb wayya’aś in v. 16 should better be rendered “Now [God] had made the two great luminaries, etc.”[v]

So there you have a summary of my understanding of Genesis one.  But for my purposes in this series the important thing is going to be that God created the human race in His image and likeness because in talking about the doings of the God of the Old Testament, and whether they are right or wrong, we must not only consider who the God of the Old Testament is, but who we are.  How else can we determine whether or not His dealings with the human race are right or not?

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[i]Pinchas Lapide, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective, p. 57

[ii]Wikipedia, Creationism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism(Note, I have not always found Wikipedia a good source.  This article contains some things I disagree with, but overall it is a very good article.)

[iii] Ibid

[iv] ibid

[v] Gleason L. Archer Jr., The Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, p. 61

 

 

The God of the Old Testament — Part 8: The Defense Begins; The Opening Statement

By Mark L. Carlon

 

John Calvin began The Institutes of the Christian Religion with this observation:

“Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists of almost entirely two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” [i]

Some years after I first read this statement, while traveling in India, I had an opportunity to read the first part of the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi.  While reading it I was struck by the fact that Gandhi’s search for truth consisted in his search for these very things, knowledge of himself and God.   He writes that he gained great insight through self-examination.  But of God, he writes, “I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him.”

My more cynical readers might say, “Of course he could not find Him, He does not exist.”  Gandhi would not be impressed by such cynicism.  In his search for truth he briefly visited what he referred to as “the dry Sahara of atheism,” and rejected it.   And though he confessed that his search for God had not yet led him to Him, he does not say that he found nothing; “Often in my progress I have had faint glimpses of the Absolute Truth, God, and daily the conviction is growing upon me that He alone is real and all else is unreal.”  Nevertheless, He wrote these sad words at the end of the introduction to his book:  

“Where is there a wretch
So wicked and loathsome as I?
I have forsaken my Maker,
So faithless have I been.

“For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from Him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am. I know that it is the evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet I cannot get away from them.”[ii]

As I read Gandhi’s book, and as I reflected particularly on its introduction — which I find unusually profound - I was struck at how close Calvin and Gandhi came in their conclusions about human nature.  By any human standard, Gandhi was one of the best our race has to offer, and yet he refers to himself as a wretch, wicked, and loathsome.  He speaks derisively of himself as one who has forsaken his maker.  He speaks of himself as faithless.  He speaks of evil passions within him that keeps God far from him, and speaks despairingly of his inability to get away from them.   But perhaps the most striking sentence in his entire biography is his confession that it is unbroken torture that he is still so far away from God.

At this point Gandhi and Calvin part company even though Calvin might have written much of Gandhi’s self description about himself.  Calvin would have testified that though all of these terrible things and more are true of him, God found him and He bestowed a grace upon him that was greater than his sin.

So how did these two men who agree with each other so completely on the moral state of their hearts reach such different conclusions?  Why did one find rest for His soul in God while the other, by his own admission, lived a life of “an unbroken torture” because he was so far from him?

As I considered this I came up with this answer: Gandhi sought, and urges us, to begin the search for truth by looking within.  In contrast, Calvin directs us to begin the search by looking outside and up:

“[The knowledge of God and ourselves] are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes, and gives birth to the other…But though the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are bound together by a mutual tie, due arrangement requires that we treat the former in the first place, and then descend to the latter.”[iii]

I agree with Calvin that the knowledge of God is the beginning of wisdom.  This is why I began my defense of the God of the Old Testament with a discussion of God.  

Unbelievers may be mystified that we believers can defend the God of the Old Testament.  But my answer to them is really very simple; if you just knew who He is you would be well on the way to understanding or at least being able to accept the things the scriptures say about Him.  But in order to gain a complete understanding and acceptance you need one more thing; you need to know who we are - the human race - in relation to Him.

So with this message we begin that same journey of self discovery that Calvin and the young Gandhi embarked on.  It is time to look at ourselves, within ourselves, to discover what kind of creatures we are.  It is time to ask, who are we, really?  

In my opinion, one of the reasons modern men and women have so much problem with the God in the Old Testament is that they beg this question and assume an answer to it that does not stand up very well once we begin to seriously examine ourselves.  For example, in one of my on-line arguments with a disciple of Richard Dawkins, I was told that God is a sadist.  In support of this he pointed to the great flood and said that my God had killed millions of innocent people. This is a serious charge.  What could more reprehensible than the killing of millions of innocents?  But were they innocent?  The Bible says they were not.  But more importantly, are we innocent, or are Calvin and Gandhi’s analysis of the state of the human heart a more accurate assessment? 

The Bible does record terrible slaughters and it attributes them to God or human beings acting as His agents.  Clearly, if the people were innocent victims then God cannot be.  But there is another possibility.  God’s defense, the one given throughout the Old Testament, is that these civilizations were not innocent, nor are God’s actions with relation to the civilizations the actions of a sadistic God.  Rather, they are the long delayed judgment of a righteous and holy God.  

So if we are going to set ourselves up as the judges of God we need to understand His defense.   His defense is actually a good offense, the best defenses always are.  His defense is not just that He is not guilty, but that we are.  Indeed, if God has done us an injustice it is not having destroyed the entire human race.  
 
God looks at us and says the same thing about us that Gandhi said of himself:

“Where are there wretches
So wicked and loathsome as these?
They have forsaken their Maker,
They have been faithless.
They are far from Him
Who governs every breath of their life.
It is their evil passions that keep them far from Him,
And yet they cannot get away from them.”

Truly, the real question in considering the actions of the God of the Old Testament is  this; does the sovereign God who created them in the first place not have the right to judge creatures such as these?  Are not these the real issues on the docket: (1) Does God have a right to judge the wicked?  (2) Are we innocent or guilty of the charges of wickedness that God brings against us? 

This ends the opening statement in my defense of the God of the Old Testament.  In my next message I will be addressing one of the main charges brought against Him; that he is unjust in putting us in such a bad world.

---

 

[i] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, p. 37-39

[ii] Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography or My Experiments with truth, the introduction

[iii] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, p. 37-39

 

The God of the Old Testament - Part 9: Concerning Human Culpability

By Mark L. Carlton

The series of natural disasters that have occurred over the last few months have caused many to ask the old question, “If there is a God of love how could He allow such things to happen?”  While the question is important, I want to point out that it is a relatively recent one.  What I mean by this is that throughout most of human history people did not ask how could God have allowed something like this to happen when disaster struck.

In earlier times it was just assumed that God or the gods must be displeased with us, and that the erupting volcanoes, earthquakes, plagues or destructive storms were, as the Weather Channel refers to them, the wrath of God.  And so men and women in earlier times responded to disasters such as this by trying to appease the gods (See my article, An Ancient Appeal to an unknown God).  

I enjoy old moves.  And the traditional way of viewing things is pictured in one of my favorites, the 1932 firm, The Bird of Paradise.   The movie is a great love story set in the South Pacific.  It is the story of about a man (Joel McCrea), who falls in love with the beautiful daughter (Dolores Del Rio) of the local chief when his the sailing ship he is on visits a tropical Island.  The chief’s daughter is smitten too, and so he decides to stay behind with the love of his life.   Unfortunately their love breaks a few tribal taboos.  As a result, the volcano god becomes restless and the volcano that dominates the main island rumbles alive in response, threatening the destruction of the entire village.   The only thing that will satisfy it is for the chief’s daughter to throw herself into the volcano.   Naturally, she chooses to do her duty rather than follow her heart (remember, this is a pre-1960s movie), and so she bravely throws herself into the volcano to appease the anger of the volcano god.  Amazingly, it works, and everyone lives happily ever after, except of course, for poor Joel McCrea, who leaves paradise with a broken heart and a bitter taste in his mouth.

This old move does a pretty good job of illustrating the way people in most times and places have viewed natural disasters.  Even today this way of thinking is so ingrained in the collective consciousness of the human race that most people think this way.  I believe it is universal, and probably innate.  So I include it in what I have referred to in an earlier series of articles as a part of our “common sense.”

It is interesting to me that even in modern times this “primitive” way of viewing natural disasters is still prevalent.  Because in spite of the fact that rationalism, materialism and naturalism dominate the West, most of the world’s peoples still live in traditional cultures and still draw cause and effect relationship between human behavior and the rampages of nature.   So the average person living in Myanmar is much more likely to look for a supernatural explanation for the cyclone that wrecked their country than a natural one.  While our access to the country is limited, I would almost guarantee that the man on the street in Myanmar links the cyclone in May with their government’s slaughter of Buddhist holy men in September.  As far as they are concerned, it is all about Karma. 

Let me share another example.  I was in India in January 1999, when Australian missionary, Graham Staines, was burned to death while he was sleeping with his two young sons in a village in the North Eastern state of Orissa by a mob of radical Hindus.  In September of the same year a devastating cyclone struck Orissa killing thousands.  A friend of mind overheard a group of Orissian Indian college students discussing the cyclone.  Cyclones are very unusual in that part of India, and the storm did indeed take an unusual track , it was almost as though it was designed to hit only Orissa.   So it was not unusual that these students would be discussing it.  But what would surprise many in the west was the certainty with which these Hindu students concluded that the cyclone was retribution for the murder of Graham Staines and his sons. 

These Indian students were well educated, and today they are probably competing successfully against the West’s best and brightest.  They are not stupid.  They just think differently than we have been taught to think in the rationalistic west.  They think the way everyone used to think in pre-scientific age times.  But let me let you in on a little secret, in spite of over two centuries of rationalism, even today, even in this country, people still think the same way.    

As earthquakes, hurricanes and tornados rampage around the nation and the world, many are asking if God is trying to tell us something.   I know this because so many people ask me this very question, and I am not just referring to church people.  It seems that collective consciousness of the human race is hard to repress, even in a culture such as ours where ideas such as divine retribution are scoffed at and regarded as the superstitious relics of a less enlightened age.   But why do we scoff at such things?  Are we in the West really wiser than the rest of world?  What sort of Chronological Snobbery, what sort of Eurocentric arrogance, says that we are the world’s sole depository of wisdom and knowledge?   

But in spite of modernist arrogance, there is a variation of the traditional way of thinking that is perfectly acceptable, even in the United States, even among naturalists and skeptics.  As I write this message I am sitting on my front porch enjoying an absolutely beautiful afternoon.  Just a few minutes ago one of my neighbors came over to talk for a few minutes so I decided to test my theory.  I asked her if she ever looked at all of the hurricanes and tornados we have been having and wondered if God is trying to tell us something.  She told me that she does not think this, nor does she blame God when these sorts of things happen.  But she said she does blame them on the way we treat our planet.  She mentioned global warming.    

I thought her response was fascinating, and I have heard others, including Al Gore, say the same thing.  In fact that was the explanation he offered for the cyclone that struck Myanmar.  But when you think about it, this is really just a variation of the traditional response.

The West, having rejected God, is now worshiping nature.  And when nature erupts we assume that we must have done something wrong.  But we are too sophisticated to throw the chief’s daughter in the volcano (Jena Bush-Hagar, is safe), but we must might throw in the SUV, especially if gas prices keep rising.   It would appear that we have the same archetype in different costumes depending on the culture. 

So it seems that we all think pretty much the same way.  The basic common sense, the collective unconsciousness, whatever you want to call it, is still there and it is hard to kill.  Here in the West, due to naturalistic pressures, we have a scientific, politically correct way of viewing natural disasters the same way they are viewed by people living in a traditional culture.   But even though the language we use is more compatible with our modernistic construct, we are really saying the same thing; the gods are mad and it is all our fault.  Perhaps it is.  Something deep inside of us seems to say it is. 

Here in the West, we reject the thought that our collective sins have angered God, and that he might be judging us for them, and we also pour scorn on those who dare to suggest such things.    But is it not ironic that we seem to have no problem with those who claim that nature’s fury is nothing more than just retribution for the collective ecological sins of the race?  Why do we give Nobel Prizes to those who say such things while scorning those who say we are courting the wrath of the God who created nature through humankind’s collective violation of His moral will?

Perhaps the answer to this question reveals more about us and our animus toward our creator than we want to admit.

Let’s change gears now and go back to the question we began with, “If there is a God of  love how could He allow such things to happen?  Those of us who believe in the old God do have a response to this question and it is related to what I have been discussing.  The unspoken implication in the question is that we deserve a better world, or if not a better world a better God.  But do we really?   The common sense, the collective unconsciousness would seem to be telling us something different, and so does the Bible.

The traditional Christian teaching is very well stated in the Book of Common Prayer: “O Lord, who for our sins are justly displeased.”  Our culture has rejected the notion that God has any just reason to be displeased with us.  Instead we have declared ourselves “basically good.”  And having acquitted ourselves of all charges, we now have brought an indictment against God for t he way he treats good people like us.  But is this modern consensus correct?  Are we really as good as we claim to be?  Does history support our claims to goodness? 

The Bible does not deny the greatness or nobility of the human race.  After all, we are created in the image of God and thus we have innate value and nobility, but along with all of our nobility the Bible insists that we also are innately depraved.  Thus we are at the same time the greatest and worst of creatures.  

If we were to only focus on the many noble and wonderful things we do we might well conclude that we are basically good.   But how easy is it to ignore the fact that the same person who does some great act of kindness in the morning may turn and commit the most awful act of cruelty in the afternoon?   And how many times has that same person been you?   

I am convinced that one of the reasons Biblical Christianity is so hated in our time is that it tells us the truth about our condition, and we would prefer to believe a lie.   James said that the word of God is like a mirror.  Unfortunately when the mirror tells us we are not the fairest of them all we reject it and walk away.  More than this, we hate it for what it says about us, and we hate the God who said in it, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

What does this have to do with the God of the Old Testament?   Frankly, everything.   Because the Bible rejects the assumption hidden in our complaints, that we deserve a better world than the one we have (see article: The Problem of Pain - Part II ), and it rejects the assumption that the judgments of God, as we have them recorded in the Old Testament, are unjust. 

God’s defense to the first charge is that the human race has a better world than they deserve and are treated with grace and mercy they could never earn.   His answer to the second charge is very simple; the civilizations that were destroyed in the Old Testament were richly deserving of the judgment that befell them, because in the great scheme of things, their collective sins against God’s holiness were far more serious than any ecological sin that the human race has ever committed.  

 

The God of the Old Testament — Part 10: The First Judgment; Paradise Lost

By Mark L. Carlton

We move now to the first judgment of God recorded in the Bible, the expulsion of the human race, which at the time consisted of just two human beings, from paradise.

I anticipate that some readers might want to argue with me about the historicity of the events recorded in the first four chapters of the Book of Genesis, so let me clearly state my position.  I realize that many modern scholars see the first and second chapters of Genesis as two separate accounts of creation.  But as I said in a previous message, I believe that the teaching of Christ ought to be definitive for a person who calls him or herself a Christian, and it just so happens that Jesus based a major teaching, His teaching on marriage, on these chapters.

As I examine Jesus’ teaching marriage I notice two things.  First, He treated the first and second chapters of Genesis as historical.  Second, He did not treat these two chapters as two separate accounts of creation but two complimentary accounts of the same event.  Given, then, that the one Christians refer to as the Lord treated the text this way, it seems to me that we who call ourselves Christians should do the same;   unless we’ve decided that Jesus was also wrong when He said, “a disciple is not above his teacher or a servant above his Lord.”   Since I consider myself a disciple of His I defer to my Master.

I also note that when Adam is referred to in the apostolic literature he is treated as an historical character.  I also note that the historicity of the fall lies at the very foundation of the Christian doctrine of salvation.  It is the reason we need a savior.

Without the fall it would be possible for the Christian to agree with the humanist manifesto and say, “No deity will save us, we must save ourselves;” and we could join hands with  Michael Jackson and the others who recorded his song, “We Are the World,” and sing, “There’s a choice we’re making, we’re saving our own lives.”  But because we believe in the fall, we Christians sound a discordant note.  Instead of saying,  “There’s a choice we’re making; we’re saving our own lives,” we sing, “Amazing Grace, how sweet that sound, that saved a wretch like me;” and contradicting the seminal document of secular humanism, we declare: “If we are to be saved some Deity must do it, because we cannot save ourselves.”   

But for the purposes of this message I am not going to be arguing for the historicity of the book of Genesis.  Instead I am going to assume the same thing that a skeptic would, that it is nothing more than a legend or a myth.  As a legend it would be or contain the memory of some event lost in the primordial past.  As a myth, it is a religious story told to communicate some truth about the human condition. 

The reason I am comfortable treating the early chapters of Genesis in this way is that in the context of this series of messages I think I can make the same point whether one considers the story of the garden and the fall as true history or as a legend or a myth, because in all cases the point of the story remains the same; we live in an imperfect world as a result of human sin.  It is the same message I referred to in my last message, that there is something in us — some archetype, some collective consciousness, some innate or intuitive sense that we all share in common — that tells us the imperfection of the world is somehow our fault.  Genesis 2-3, whether taken as history, legend or a myth, asserts that this is indeed the case.

I am frequently asked, “If God knows all things then He knew Adam and Eve would sin, so why did He put the tree in the Garden of Eden?”  As is often the case when people ask questions like this, the unspoken assumptions underlying the question is more interesting than the question.   In this case the assumptions are multilayered.  The first is that God did something wrong in creating a universe with the potential for evil.  The second is that whatever God is doing in time and space, it is all about us…or that it should be. 

So, let’s address the assumptions first and then we’ll answer the question. As to the first assumption asserts that God did something wrong when He created a universe with the potential for evil.  But for us to know this we would need to know everything that God intends to do in time and space, and since know so little about the universe or the mind of God, I don’t think we are able to say whether or not creating a universe with the potential for evil was a good or a bad thing. 

As to the second assumption; if what God is doing in time and space is all about us then I suppose it could be argued that God could or should have treated us better.  But from the little we do know about the working of God in time and space, it appears that it is not us, it is all about Him.  This being the case, we need to at least be open to the possibility that what God intends to do, a universe with the possibility of evil, creatures with the ability to chose between the two, and the opportunity to do so, must be the right situation for accomplishing the purposes of the One who created it.   Thus, we do not not say that we live in the best of all possible worlds, but we live in the right world for the unfolding purposes of God as they pertain to us.   

Now let us go back to Genesis and the story of the fall of humankind, and take a look at exactly what it teaches us.  The story presents us with the story of the creation of the human race.  It introduces us to a man and woman created innocent, not virtuous, but with the opportunity to move from innocence to virtue.  The garden in which they find themselves is a perfect setting for this.  In the garden the maximum was allowed and the minimum was forbidden, in fact, only one thing was forbidden.

Now I suppose that the perfect world from a human standpoint would be innocence without virtue and a world in which everything is allowed.  But God apparently desired that they graduate from innocence to virtue and that they do this by submitting themselves in faith to the moral will of God as it was known to them.  At that time it was very simple.  It still is.  It consists of believing what God has said and obeying.  In the case of the couple in the garden, they were called to believe just one thing, that God was telling them the truth about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden.  On the basis of this revelation they were given just one command: do not eat the fruit of that tree.  Finally, they were are warned of the consequence of disobedience; death.

Genesis tells us that the first humans failed this test, and that through the disobedience of Adam (I note that it was only when Adam sinned that their eyes were opened) sin and death then entered the world.  It is often said that they did not die when they ate the fruit.  I will be posting an audio sermon I preached on this very subject, but suffice it to say for now that they did die the day they disobeyed God and ate the fruit.  But death is defined in Genesis not by physical death, but by the things that happened to Adam, Eve, and the world on the day they ate the fruit. 

Death includes such things as guilt, shame, fear, pain and finally physical death (from dust you were taken from dust you will return).  All of these things were part of the first act of divine judgment described in the Bible, but for our purposes perhaps the two most painful aspects of the death that entered the world through the fall are the race’s separation from its creator and the loss of paradise. 

The story of Genesis tells us that the world we now live in is broken.  It tells us that the first couple was broken too.  And in chapter four and five it tells us that the death that impacted the first couple was passed on to their posterity.  We see it first in Cain., and we see it in godly Abel as he becomes the first man to experience  physical death.  Then in the genealogies we read of its effects over and over again as we read that this or that person was born, had a notable son or daughter, and died, and their sons and daughters died, and their sons and daughters died.   Paul says it so well, “In Adam all died.”  And so death become the sad end of every human story.  There are no happy endings in the broken world.  So the first judgment of God turned this world into the Green Mile, a death row where all of us await our turn to follow Adam in returning to the dust. 

But there is also a message of hope.  Death row this world may be, and the world we live in is indeed broken by sin, but God’s grace has mitigated its brokenness by filling it with may good things.  Like the world, we are broken too, but God has mitigated our brokenness as well, so that even our fallen natures are held in check by something theologians refer to as, common grace.   As are result, there is enough good left in this world that we would be content to live here on the Green Mile forever were it not for the world’s damnable brokenness.

So in this world we are often distressed by the brokenness of the world.   Yet we are often delighted as we enjoy remnants of what was, and of what may be again.  Thus, the world we live in is more than just death row, it is also the vestibule of eternity, in which we are presented with samples of eternity.  In the brokenness of the word we have a taste of that separation from God which we refer to as, Hell.   In the good things we enjoy we enjoy a foretaste of eternity with God. 

But this world is more than death row and the vestibule of eternity, it is also a testing ground.  Here we will all face our own encounters with the serpent, and we will make our choices.  The choices we make as we walk the path of life will have a great deal to do with the quality of our journey, and the Bible indicates it will ultimately determine our eternity as well.  

So these are the consequences of the first sin.  These are the results of the fall.  Some will protest that it is not fair that we suffer as a result of Adam and Eve’s sin.  Undoubtedly, this is true.  That is the problem with sin; it is unfair by its very nature.  No wonder God hates it. 

Perhaps God could have chosen some other judgment.  Perhaps He could have sentenced Adam and Eve to physical death the very day they sinned.  But he chose another judgment instead.  That is his right as the creator.  So God determined that the human race would continue.  In doing this He was accepted the fact that a broken race in a broken world would result in all sorts of horrors.  So why would he do it?  Words like grace and mercy come to mind.

Perhaps someone would argue that knowing the horrors that would come from it, God should not have allowed the human race to continue.   I respect the argument, but I for one am glad He chose the less drastic option, the one that came with the gracious promise that in spite of our sin, someday the woman’s seed would come.  His heal would be bruised in His battle with the serpent, but would not stop until the serpent’s head was crushed.

 

The God of the Old Testament – Part 12: The Pain of God and the Rampages of Nature

By Mark L. Carlton

Two weeks ago my wife and I witnessed and were almost victims of a rampage of nature in central Nebraska.   We were on the way to Branson, Missouri and were almost caught in the tornados that eventually hit Kearney, Grand Island and Aurora, Nebraska. 

Growing up in the Midwest I have been through many bad storms and tornado warnings, but this was the first time I have ever seen a tornado.  Actually, we saw three tornados and there was another one about 100 yards from us that kicked up so much dirt that we couldn’t see it.

We were parked at a rest stop at the time, hoping to wait out the storm.  But when a big sign came cart-wheeling in front of us I decided to make a run for it.   We arrived at the Kearney interchange just as the storm sirens started to sound, so we decided to keep driving.  Fortunately, we finally outran the storm.

The Weather Channel has a regular feature about these sorts of events;  they call it, The Wrath of God.  Insurance companies refer to the damage they cause as “acts of God.”   But what is really happening when a cyclone or a tornado strikes and leaves a trail of death and destruction in its wake? 

My reading of the Old Testament (and I think the New Testament too) leads me to answer the question, sometimes.  As I have previously written, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.  In fact, we live in a world that has been cursed as a result of human sin.  Because of this, sometimes accursed things happen.

Jesus once weighed in on a couple of accursed events that happened in His day.  It all began when He was asked about an atrocity committed by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate.  Pilate had apparently killed some men from Galilee who had come to the temple to worship.  In the process, their blood had been mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.  In commenting on this outrage Jesus also referred to another event, one of those acts of God.  The tower of Siloam in Jerusalem apparently collapsed killing 18 men.

In commenting on these tragedies Jesus told us that we should not assume that those who died in these tragedies were worse sinners that other men.     But, interestingly, Jesus did not deny that their deaths were a result of a more general judgment of sin.  On the contrary, He warned his listeners to learn a lesson from these tragedies.  What lesson?  That “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish[i] “

Jesus’ answer may seem harsh, yet if my life had been taken by the tornados that struck central Nebraska I would hope that a similar message would be given at my funeral.  If fact, I would hope the pastor would use Luke 13:1-5 as his text.  I would hope that he would use my death to remind those few who gathered to mourn me that they should remember that their day will come too.  I would hope that he would remind them of the point I made in last week’s sermon; we live our lives on the Green Mile, death row.  And barring repentance, none of us is going to get out of here alive.  

 Truly the scriptures are correct in declaring; “it is appointed unto man once to die,”[ii]  and someday, when the bell tolls for us, something natural, something of this world, is going to be listed as the cause of our death.   So whether we die as a result of diseases, plagues, crime, war or natural disaster, someday something will cause our death.   But the Bible points to a deeper cause.  Paul said it best, “The wages of sin is death,[iii]” and since all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, there is a sense in which the physical death of every man and woman is used either to carry out the sentence we have earned, or in the case of the forgiven, as the means God will use to bring us home.

So God may in fact use a tornado, or the butchery of a tyrant like Pilate for purposes of judgment.  In fact, Christians believe this is exactly how God used Pilate in the case of Jesus.  But in a broader sense, a cursory reading of the Bible makes it clear that sometimes God uses tragedy to judge peoples and civilizations that have sinned so grievously His goodness demands that His justice remove them.  What I mean is that there comes a time when God would cease to be good if He did not use some means to judge the wicked.  The first example the Bible gives us of this principle is the Great Flood.   

In responding to me in one of my earlier arguments, an atheist acquaintance argued that my God was a sadist.  One of the things he pointed to was God’s killing of millions of innocent people in the flood.  But in bringing this accusation against the God he chose to reject what the Bible says about the reasons for the flood.   The Bible says the flood was sent upon a world that had it coming:

                “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.”[iv]

                “Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence.  And God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.”[v]

                “Then God said, ‘The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them…”[vi]

Now I know that someone will ask, “What about the children?”  I do not intend to dodge the question.  However, I will be deferring my answer to it until my discussion on the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah.   But for now I would ask you to meditate upon a statement God made after the waters of the flood had cleansed the earth: “I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”[vii]

Now let us consider some of the lessons we learn about the God of Old Testament from the story of the flood.   In the Bible’s first recorded judgment, the judgment of Adam and Eve, we learned that God had established a moral order in the universe, and that He expects humankind to submit to His moral will as it is revealed to them.  We also saw that He was compassionate and gracious to the sinning couple.  In the second judgment, the judgment of Cain and Abel, we learn that God hates murder and that He is the avenger of innocent blood.  But once again we note His mercy in His decision to allow Cain to live, even though he had taken the life of his brother.   But with the flood we begin to learn things about the God of the Old Testament that set Him apart from every other god men have ever worshipped.    

Beginning with the flood, we begin to see just how much God hates sin.  We still see His grace and mercy in such things as the preservation of Noah and his family and in the 120 years he gave the human race to avoid the judgment of the flood by responding with repentance to the preaching of Noah.[viii]   Had there been no flood, we might be deluded into thinking that God is not all that bothered by human sin.   After all, in the years from Cain to Noah we see God doing nothing about the growing wickedness on the earth.  This could be interpreted as indifference.  But with the flood we have our first glimpse of the wrath of God, and we begin to see just how much He hates sin.   We also note that God is indeed willing to use the forces of nature to pour out devastating judgment on the wicked.  We will see it again as we continue our survey of the Old Testament, and the New Testament warns us that we will see it again at the end of the age.

But there are other things we learn about the God of the Old Testament from the Genesis flood.   We note that He sees and knows what is going on in the earth, and just as important, He is impacted by what He sees.   Here we see what we might have missed; the God of the universe has emotions; He even feels pain… and our actions cause it.  Consider what is said about God in the verses we quoted earlier in this message: “The Lord was sorry…He was grieved in His heart.”   Commenting on this, the late, Francis Schaeffer, made this observation: 

“We begin to lose our humanity as soon as we begin to lose the emphasis that what we do makes a difference.  We can glorify God, and both the Old and New Testament say that we can even make God sad.  That is tremendous.”

Indeed, it is tremendous.  In one of the ancient pagan flood stories, God destroys the world because people are too noisy.    The God of this theological system is arbitrary and cruel.   It posits an angry, vengeful God who delights in the destruction of the world.  This theology has found a home in the theology of many of God’s modern critics.  But is this an accurate picture of the God of the Old Testament?  I think not.

The Old Testament says God “takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked.”[ix]  The Bible speaks of a longsuffering God[x] — “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger.[xi]”  Read the Old Testament prophets; there you will see a God mourning the sin of His people and agonizing over the judgment their sins are bringing down upon them.