Source: http://tinyurl.com/3mngdvy

NPR has an article out discussing the recent evangelical wrestling with the historicity (or not) of Adam and Eve, and so it seems like a good time to chime in. While it might be simplest to ask “is a literal Adam and Eve important?”, I think such a question is unhelpful, because it bundles together several distinct questions. I’m going to suggest answers to what I think are the more probative questions, below.

(1) Is it necessary to believe in a literal Adam and Eve to be saved? I think the answer is, if the person is otherwise orthodox, no. Whatever conditions are placed upon justification in scripture, it is not absolute doctrinal perfection. Some might argue that the historicity of Adam and Eve is an essential doctrine, but, as I’ve argued previously, I think what is essential is properly decided more on a case by case basis, and thus while in some cases a denial of a historical Adam and Eve might be paired with other, more essential, denials, the denial in itself can often be coupled with a relatively orthodox faith otherwise. (more…)

An old post from Denyse O’Leary:

Here are the Canadian responses to the 2007 question by percentage, along with the US figures to a similar series of questions in brackets:

-Less than one in three Canadians (29%) believe that God had no part in the creation or development of human beings. (US: 13%)
-Fewer still (26%) believe “that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so”. (US: 46%)
-A plurality, but still only 34%, say that “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process”. (US: 36%)

…

What did surprise me is that Decima, the polling firm, did not ask for the religious affiliation of the respondents. Here’s why I think that was an oversight: In a trend that also departs very much from the American scene, the people who intend to vote Liberal were much more likely than those who intended to vote either Conservative or NDP (leftist) to choose a “theistic” option – God either created humans or guided the process. Only 22% of Liberals thought God had nothing to do with it, but 31% of Conservatives thought that, as did 31% of leftist voters.

Some arguments that it doesn’t (HT: Uncommon Descent):

Thirdly, peer review is largely a lottery. Multiple studies have shown how if several authors are asked to review a paper, their agreement on whether it should be published is little higher than would be expected by chance [11]. A study in Brain evaluated reviews sent to two neuroscience journals and to two neuroscience meetings [12]. The journals each used two reviewers, but one of the meetings used 16 reviewers while the other used 14. With one of the journals the agreement among the journals was no better than chance while with the other it was slightly higher. For the meetings the variance in the decision to publish was 80 to 90% accounted for by the difference in opinions of the reviewers and only 10 to 20% by the content of the abstract submitted.

A fourth problem with peer reviews is that it does not detect errors. At the British Medical Journal we took a 600 word study that we were about to publish and inserted eight errors [13]. We then sent the paper to about 300 reviewers. The median number of errors spotted was two, and 20% of the reviewers did not spot any. We did further studies of deliberately inserting errors, some very major, and came up with similar results.

The fifth problem with pre-publication peer review is bias. There have been many studies of bias – with conflicting results – but the most famous was published in Behavioural and Brain Sciences [14]. The authors took 12 studies that came from prestigious institutions that had already been published in psychology journals. They retyped the papers, made minor changes to the titles, abstracts, and introductions but changed the authors’ names and institutions. They invented institutions with names like the Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential. The papers were then resubmitted to the journals that had first published them. In only three cases did the journals realise that they had already published the paper, and eight of the remaining nine were rejected – not because of lack of originality but because of poor quality. The authors concluded that this was evidence of bias against authors from less prestigious institutions. Most authors from less prestigious institutions, particularly those in the developing world, believe that peer review is biased against them.

Edward Feser writes in The Last Superstition:

A particularly famous criticism of Aristotelian Scholasticism by early modern philosophers is enshrined in Molière’s joke about the doctor who pretends to explain why opium causes sleep by saying that it has a “dormitive power.” The reason this is supposed to be funny is that since “dormitive power” just means “a power to cause sleep,” the doctor’s answer amounts to saying “opium causes sleep because it has a power to cause sleep”; and this, it is said, is a mere tautology, and therefore explains nothing at all. (A real knee-slapper, no?) In general (so the objection continues) Aristotelian Scholasticism, in positing inherent causal powers, forms, and final causes of various sorts, merely peddles empty phrases of this sort instead of genuine explanations. The trouble with this objection, though, is that the statement in question, while admittedly not terribly informative considered all by itself, is not a tautology; it does have substantial content, even if that content is minimal. To say “opium causes sleep because it causes sleep” would be a tautology. But the statement in question says more than that,. It says that opium has a power to cause sleep; that is to say, it says that the fact that sleep follows from the ingestion of opium is not a mere accidental feature of this or that sample of opium, but derives from something in the very nature of opium as such. That this claim is by no means trivial or tautological is evidenced by the fact that the early modern philosophers rejected it as false. They didn’t say, “Sure, opium has a power to cause sleep, but that doesn’t tell us anything” (which is what they should have said if it really were a tautology). Rather, they said, “Opium does not have such a power, because there are no inherent powers, forms, etc.” Moreover, they couldn’t very well dismiss the appeal to power and the like as tautological on the grounds that such an appeal has only minimal content, because their own alternative proposal, when it too is considered all by itself, also has minimal content: To say “Opium causes sleep because the chemical structure of opium is such that, when ingested, sleep results” is hardly more informative than “Opium causes sleep because it has a power to cause sleep.” If the former statement is not a tautology — and it isn’t — then the latter isn’t either.

Of course, the critic of scholasticism is going to say, “But the reference to chemical structure isn’t supposed to be a complete explanation all by itself; it’s just a starting point, and detailed empirical investigation into the specific chemical properties of opium would be needed in order to give a fully satisfying explanation.” And that is perfectly true. But exactly the same thing is true of the Scholastic appeal to forms, powers, final causes, etc. Such appeals are not supposed to be the whole story. What they are intended to do, rather, is to point out that whatever the specific empirical details about opium turn out to be, the fundamental metaphysical reality is that these details are just the mechanism by which opium manifests the inherent powers it has qua opium, powers that a thing has to have if it is going to have any causal efficacy at all. This is perfectly consistent with, and indeed is (from an Aristotelian point of view) the only way to properly understand, the results of modern chemistry: The empirical chemical facts as now known are nothing other than a specification of the material cause underlying the formal and final causes that define the essence of opium. As elsewhere, the “critique” of Aristotelianism here rests on an unjustified double standard coupled with a failure to distinguish metaphysical issues from empirical ones. [180-181]

From Andrew Potter’s The Authenticity Hoax:

The search for authenticity is about the search for meaning in a world where all the traditional sources — religion and successor ideals such as aristocracy, community, and nationalism — have been dissolved in the acid of science, technology, capitalism, and liberal democracy. We are looking to replace the God concept with something more acceptable in a world that is not just disenchanted, but also socially flattened, cosmopolitan, individualistic, and egalitarian. It is a complicated and difficult search, one that leads people down a multitude of paths that include the worship of the creative and emotive powers of the self; the fetishization of our premodern past and its contemporary incarnation in exotic cultures; the search for increasingly obscure and rarefied forms of consumption and experience; a preference for local forms of community and economic organization; and, most obviously, an almost violent hostility to the perceived shallowness of Western forms of consumption and entertainment.

The quasi-biblical jargon of authenticity, with its language of separation and distance, of lost unity, wholeness, and harmony, is so much a part of our moral shorthand that we don’t always notice that we’ve slipped into what is essentially a religious way of thinking. The ease with which we talk about our alienation from nature, or the alienating nature of work, or the suburbs, or technology, is part of this language as well, hearkening back to our ongoing sense that we are fallen people. [Kindle Location: 209ff.]

As Potter is not a believer, the fact that he could make these connections to religion stood out pretty starkly to me. But maybe others disagree with his assessment. Thoughts?

(FWIW, I did like The Legend of Bagger Vance.)

The result, accordingly, is that religion is not limited to one single human faculty but embraces the human being as a whole. The relation to God is total and central. We must love God with all our mind, all our soul, and all our strength. Precisely because God is God he claims us totally, in soul and body, with all our capacities and in all our relations. Admittedly, there is order in this relation of a human being to God. Here, too, every faculty exists and functions in a person according to its own nature. Knowledge is primary. There can be no true service of God without true knowledge: “I do not desire anything I do not know” (Ignoti nulla cupido). To be unknown is to be unloved. “Whoever would approach God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seeks [sic] him” (Heb. 11:6). Faith comes from what is heard (Rom. 10:17). Pagans fell into idolatry and unrighteousness because they did not acknowledge God (Rom. 1:18ff.). But that knowledge of God penetrates the heart and arouses there an assortment of affections, of fear and hope, sadness and joy, guilt feelings and forgiveness, misery and redemption, as these are pictured to us throughout Scripture but especially in the Psalms. And through the heart it in turn affects the will: faith is manifest in works, in love (James 1:27; 1 John 1:5-7; Rom. 2:10, 13; Gal. 5:6; 1 Cor. 13 etc.). Head, heart, and hand are all equally—though each in its own way—claimed by religion; it takes the whole person, soul and body, into its service.

For that reason religion also comes into contact with all the other cultural forces, especially science, morality, and art. Proudhon once stated: “It is astonishing how at the base of all things we find theology.” But to that statement Donoso Cortes correctly replied: “The only astonishing thing in this fact is Mr. Proudhon’s astonishment.” Religion as the relation to God indicates the place in which human beings stand in relation to all other creatures. It embraced dogma, law, and cult and is therefore closely connected with science, morality, and art. It encompasses the whole person in his or her thinking, feeling, and action, in the whole of his or her life, everywhere and at all times. Nothing falls outside of its scope. Religion extends its power over the whole person, over all of humanity, over family and society and state. It is the foundation of the true, the good, and the beautiful. It introduces unity, coherence, and life into the world and its history. From it science, morality, and art derive their origin; to it they return and find rest… . It is the beginning and the end, the soul of everything, that which is highest and deepest in life. What God is to the world, religion is to humanity.

Nevertheless, religion is distinguished from all the forces of culture and maintains its independence from them all. Religion is central; science, morality, and art are partial. While religion embraces the whole person, science, morality, and art are respectively rooted in the intellect, the will, and the emotions. Religion aims at nothing less than eternal blessedness in fellowship with God; science, morality, and art are limited to creatures and seek to enrich this life with the true, the good, and the beautiful. Religion, accordingly, cannot be equated with anything else. In the life and history of humankind, it occupies an independent place of its own, playing a unique and all-controlling role. Its indispensability can even be demonstrated from the fact that at the very moment people reject religion as an illusion they again turn some creature into their god, thus seeking to compensate for their religious need in some other way. [268-269]

plus c'est la même chose

In the earliest period pagan authorities limited themselves to persecution, or to hatred and mockery, as expressed by Tacitus and Lucian in his Peregrinus Proteus. But in time the pagan world had to take account of Christianity and began to attack it scientifically. Heinrich Kellner, in his Hellenismus und Christenthum, describing the intellectual reaction of ancient paganism to Christianity, points out its kinship with present-day opposition to Christianity. The main scientific opponents were Celsus, Porphyry, Fronto the friend of Aurelius, and later Julian [the "Apostate"] who, as is evident from Cyril’s refutation entitled Against Julian, wrote a book against Christians. All the arguments later advanced against Christianity can already be found in these writers–arguments, for example, against the authenticity and truth of many Bible books (the Pentateuch, Daniel, and the Gospels) and against revelation and miracles in general; arguments against an assortment of dogmas such as the incarnation, satisfaction, forgiveness, the resurrection, and eternal punishment; arguments also against norms of morality such as asceticism, contempt of the world, and lack of refinement; and, finally, slanderous accusations of worshiping an ass’s head, and of committing child murder, adultery, and all sorts of immorality. [Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics vol 1., 121-122]

Bavinck comments on Biblical Theology and scholastic theology:

Only within the communion of the saints can the length and breadth, the depth and the height, of the love of Christ be comprehended (Eph. 3:18). Add to this that the proponents of this school [Biblical Theology] forget that the Christian faith is universal; it can and must enter into all forms and conditions. They oppose grace to nature in a hostile fashion and do not sufficiently take account of the incarnation of the Word. For just as the Son of God became truly human, so also God’s thoughts, incorporated in Scripture, become flesh and blood in the human consciousness. Dogmatics is and ought to be divine thought totally entered into and absorbed in our human consciousness, freely and independently expressed in our language, in its essence the fruit of centuries, in its form contemporary… . Accordingly, the contrast often made between biblical theology and dogmatics, as though one reproduced the content of Scripture while the other restated the dogmas of the church, is false. The sole aim of dogmatics is to set forth the thoughts of God that he has laid down in Holy Scripture. But it does this as it ought to, in a scholarly fashion, in a scholarly form, and in accordance with a scholarly method. In that sense, Reformed scholars in earlier centuries defended the validity of so-called scholastic theology (theologia scholastica). They had no objections whatever to the idea of presenting revealed truth also in a simpler form under the name of positive theology, catechetics, and so forth. But they utterly opposed the notion that the two differed in content; what distinguished them was merely a difference in form and method. By taking this position they, on the one hand, as firmly as possible maintained the unity and bond between faith and theology, church and school. On the other hand, they also held high the scientific character of theology. However high and wonderful the thoughts of God might be, they were not aphorisms but constituted an organic unity, a systematic whole, that could also be thought through and cast in a scientific form. Scripture itself prompts this theological labor when everywhere it lays the strongest emphasis, not on abstract cognition, but on doctrine and truth, knowledge and wisdom. [vol. 1, 83-84]

In the comment thread for David Fitch’s post about Reformed theology and mission, some discussion was had about the role of Old Princeton. I’ve recently been listening to an iTunesU lecture series from Reformed Theological Seminary on “The Legacy of Old Princeton“. One lecture in particular is focused entirely on the role of Princeton in missions:

The Last Command – 02

Another lecture discusses the old canard that the Princetonians were “rationalists”, apparently ignoring the place of piety and spiritual discipline in the Christian life:

The Last Command – 01

Finally, the first lecture discusses the ideas the Princetonians had about the place of reason and learning in the faith, addressing the common slur that Old Princeton was “fundamentalist”:

Faith and Learning

One choice quote from this lecture:

In a sermon preached to the Princeton students on John 1:14… Warfield said that Christians must cultivate an attitude of courage in the pursuit of truth, not leaving the field to unbelievers and enemies of the church, but must become leaders in every science. Failure in this has meant that Christians have borrowed from others false theories in philosophy, science, and criticism, have made unnecessary concessions to them, and have brought upon themselves–as they were compelled to change their positions from time to time–unnecessary disgrace.

There are three more lectures in the series I haven’t linked to here, two of them about faith and science, which may be of interest to some readers.

This is the second part of a two part series on Greg Beale’s understanding of Genesis 1-2 and science. Click here for part one.

 Quite frankly I am bored by debates about the relationship of Genesis to modern science. While I’m not a theistic evolutionist, I don’t particularly care to land the plane on any of the other evangelical options regarding dating the universe and so on. I know God created all things. I believe Jesus and Paul thought Adam and Eve were historical persons. And most definitely, Genesis depicts a true account of reality (there’s no Harry Frankfurt “bullshit” here). Beyond that, I have no idea.

 Part of the appeal with Greg Beale’s work on Genesis 1-2 is that he sees the Genesis narrative depicting the universe in a phenomenological and theological sense, not scientific. This hopefully will allow me to bypass debates that I can’t be bothered to look into.

 In this blog post I just want to share some of my notes, which back up Beale’s claim that Israel’s small temple was understood to be a microcosm of the entire universe. And for the author of Genesis, the entire universe was one massive cosmic temple in which God dwelt. Hopefully you will find this as helpful as I have. (more…)