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Why does the world look so old?

I was thinking of writing a blog post about the theological consequences of accepting the old earth theory (i.e.: the earth is several billion years old) and then reading that into the Bible, but it appears Dr. Albert Mohler did that already and did a much better job than I could at his address at the 2010 Ligonier Ministries Conference.

In summation, beyond just the natural reading of Genesis 1 and exegetical arguments for 24 hour days (which, despite the day-age theorizing, are so strong that it's difficult to hold to the inerrancy of the Bible and an old earth), holding to an old earth theory of "creation" has a profound effect on one's theology.  For one, the historicity of the Fall cannot be held to.  If one cannot hold to a historical Fall and the resulting effects of sin (one of which being physical death entering the world), then a great deal of the Bible's teaching on sin and redemption crumbles.  For instance, the way Paul shows the necessity of Christ's redeeming work in Romans (particularly chapter 5) is based on a historical understanding of Adam and the Fall.  What does Christ as the second Adam mean if there never was a first Adam?  Or if Adam was just one of a great number of evolving humans, how then can he be the father of humanity, whose sin affected all humanity as his progeny.  

Here's Mohler's address here in video form, or here as a transcript (incidentally, hosted by the very organization, biologos, he was speaking out against).

The Social Gospel

I'll return to the covenants in a day or two, but first I wanted to write a little something on the social gospel, or social outreach by the church in general.  I've seen a lot of social outreaches (feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, disaster relief, etc.) being supported by churches and Christians lately, and that's great.  We're called to visit the widows and orphans in their affliction (James 1:27).  We're even called to feed our enemies when they are hungry (Romans 12:20), but sometimes it can miss the point.

Humanitarian efforts mean nothing if they don't forward the gospel.  I'm not saying every bowl of rice has to come with a tract, but if we merely clothe a man and then leave him alone, is he really much better off?  A glass a water may stave off a man's thirst for awhile, but only the living water of Christ can make a man never thirst again (John 4:10).  Man is born, by virtue of his sinful nature, with a one way ticket to an eternity in Hell.  That is his real affliction, far more serious than water or food (though God knows that we need those things too, Matthew 6:32).  Now obviously we of means should not ignore the physical sufferings of our fellow man, but as J. Gresham Machen said:

Wherever the notion is cherished that the relief of physical suffering is somehow more important--more practical--than the welfare of the human spirit, these material things are being made the chief object of pursuit.  And that is not Christian love.  Christian love does not, indeed, neglect man's physical welfare; it does not give a man a sermon when he needs bread.  It relieves distress; it delights in affording even the simplest pleasure to a child.  But it always does these things with the consciousness of the one inestimable gift that it has in reserve.  (From What is Faith?)

There has always been a tendency in some branches Christianity (at least in modern times) towards nourishing the body of man while neglecting his soul.  Perhaps it's because man, many times, is so much more appreciative when you feed him or clothe him.  Many unsaved men will respond with a blank stare, or even outright derision, to the gospel message when shared with him.  A hungry man will rarely refuse a warm Big Mac.  And yet man is so much more hungry for the Gospel--they just refuse to realize it.  I was reminded of this again, reading Michael Horton's excellent article on the tension in evangelicalism between its reformed and anti-reformed, pietist roots.  The latter roots lay in the second "Great Awakening", led in great portion by Charles Finney.  This movement

confused the Kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of this world and imagined that Christ's reign could be made visible by the moral, social, and political activity of the saints. There was little room for anything weighty to tie the movement down, to discipline its entrepreneurial celebrities, or to question its "revivals" apart from their often short-lived publicity.  (From the article mentioned above)

This in part led to the Social Gospel movement of the early 20th century which held the belief that the second coming could not occur until the church had rid the world of social evils but largely ignored the call to evangelism.  This confusion of the Kingdom of Christ with the kingdoms of the world, as Horton puts it, has never really lost its hold on the mainstream church.  

Humanitarian and social efforts are like life support.  They can never cure the disease or remove death from the door, it just makes life a little more palatable and delays death a little longer.  Life support, in its proper use, is just a tool to give the physicians more time and opportunity to supply a cure.  To provide life support and withhold the cure (the gospel) is no favor to the patient!  Death will still come, and he will be no better off when it does.  We have the cure, let's use it.

What is a covenant?

A century before the conquest of Canaan, a near-eastern (most commonly Hittite) covenant was distinguished by a number of elements:

1. Preamble: Identifies who made the treaty, frequently of the form "Thus saith [name], the great king, king of [land], son of [name] ... the valiant".
2. Historical Prologue:  The history of the relationship between the parties involved that brought about and justified the treaty.  These were treaties between a suzerain and vassal (to use feudal terms), that is to say a great king or emperor and the lesser king under his protection.  The historical prologue enumerated the great things the suzerain had done for the vassal (rescued him from his enemies, etc.) in great detail, as if to show that by virtue of the benevolence of the suzerain nothing less than grateful acceptance of the covenant (which were typically very one-sided) was merited.
3. Stipulations: The terms of the treaty were set forth, frequently as "Thou shalt... thou shalt not...".   These were seen as more than legal obligations, but the utterly reasonable duty of the vassal and not merely to be carried out mechanically out of obligation, but with trust, love, and genuine faithfulness, fitting the character of the liberation received by the people of the lesser king.  Frequent stipulations included no alliances with other kings, no murmuring against the suzerain, payment of tribute tax, and a pledge to raise a regiment of soldiers for any action against a covenant breaker.  This was in return  
4. Sanctions: These were the ramifications of the vassal failing to uphold the covenant, typically following a "blessings and cursings" formula.  In return for faithful adherence to the covenant, the suzerain pledged to guard his vassals.  The vassal was granted the right to "invoke" the suzerain's name, assuring swift rescue from the great king. 
5. Deposit of the Treaty:  Tablets of the treaty were deposited in the sacred temples of both parties.  A periodic public reading of the covenant was also required, to remind the peoples and the new generations of their obligations.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?  It should, a great portion of the Bible is written in covenantal form.  Even the common ceremonies of ratifying covenants appear in the Bible.  Some ceremonies involved the parties passing between the split carcasses of animals (as if to say, may this befall me if I break the covenant, recall Abraham's dream in Genesis 14), others involved the vassal king walking behind the suzerain down an aisle (hence the language of "walking after God" in the Scriptures).  Celebratory meals were often had after ratification as well.  

There are many covenantal layers to the Bible.  You can look at the specific Old Testament covenants, such as the Adamic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, and the Mosaic or Sinai covenant.  You can even look at the whole Bible as the historical prologue to the new covenant (the term "testament" even implies this).  Many have argued that covenants form the very basic architecture of the Bible and are, if not fundamental, than extremely useful in understanding it.  This is the field of covenantal theology.  

An example of this might be the distinguishing between the Sinai and the Adamic covenant.  It's obvious that the two covenants were not enforced in the same manner.  One slip up and Adam and Eve were considered covenant breakers and were shipped out of the Garden of Eden.  Israel, after taking their oath to the covenant at Sinai, screwed up time and time again and yet God was patient and longsuffering.  If He had enforced it as he did the Adamic covenant, Israel would have never made it to Canaan!  Though it's not crystal clear in Scripture, the difference probably lies in the purposes of the covenants.  The Adamic covenant was an individual covenant whose purpose was to stipulate the duty required under God's protection from death.  The Sinaic covenant, on the other hand, though containing elements geared towards the individual, was mainly a national covenant meant to establish a people for typological purposes.  The people of Israel were/are meant to prefigure the true and everlasting Kingdom of God.  They could not fulfill that role if perfect obedience was required (again, perfect obedience was still required for individual salvation as per the Adamic covenant, but not for national protection and oversight).  

So, that's a brief introduction to the covenant.  I'm no expert on covenant theology--far from it in fact.  Dispensationalism is generally regarded as the school of theology opposite covenant theology (though they are certainly not incompatible in all respects), and I was raised by dispensationalist parents and spent 2 years at the bastion of dispensationalism, Moody Bible Institute.  My idea of covenant theology was that it believed that national Israel was completely superceded by the Church and God has no role for them to play any longer (A belief mostly characteristic of traditional covenant theologians) and that they interpreted eschatological (end time) prophecy very metaphorically (actually varies a great deal amongst covenant theologians).  Dispensationalism, on the other hand, is extremely literal in prophetic interpretation.  Followers generally believe in a rapture prior to a tribulation, prior to a millennial reign of Christ on this Earth.  Covenant theologians generally (and this isn't entirely being fair, as there is a great deal of variation) do not, holding to no rapture, tribulation being a generalized period of trouble for the church, possibly referring to the persecutions of the Roman Empire, and the millennial reign being a figurative picture of Christ superintending his Church throughout the Church Age (today).  Dispensationalism views God as relating to humans in fundamentally different ways (often implying different methods of obtaining salvation) under different historical periods, whereas covenant theology sees God as more uniform in His dealings with man.  They believe typically that, while God's revelation of Himself and his manner of dealing with mankind has progressed and increased through history, all it has done is further elucidate His same manner of relating to mankind.  I don't know if I'm being 100% accurate in my description of covenant theology, as most of it I've learned through the lens of dispensationalist works, but I think I'm being pretty fair.

However, though well schooled in dispensationalism, it always bothered me that so many of the greatest, most devoted exegetes of the Bible throughout history were not dispensational (really, dispensationalism didn't even come up until the 1800's).  I always wanted to spend some time looking into it, so now I am!   The first thing that I am learning is that covenant theology is much more rich and complex than a simple way of interpreting end times prophecy.  There's a lot more to it, and it's very fascinating, as I hope the opening portion of this post showed.  I'm presently reading Introducing Covenant Theology by Dr. Michael Horton (which the opening description of covenants is highly dependent upon) as well as some other articles and materials, and plan to keep posting what I learn!  

I'm going to write a blog post telling you I'm writing a blog post

The title really says all I need to say.  My next blog post of substance will occur tonight.  I'm writing this so that I actually follow through--with this up there I will have some pressure to actually do it.  If I don't do it, then you all who are reading this (*crickets chirping*) can get on my case to actually do it.

Also, the design of this blog is very much subject to change, so.... design ideas anyone?  I'm looking to keep it simple, clean, and readable.  In the mean time, for Gib:







Update:  Thanks to a impromptu debate with Dwayne Tryumf (the rapper), and a certain red bearded sailor coming over, I'm not sure if I will get it done tonight.  We'll see!

An Exercise in Logic

Most of my friends know that I'm quite into theology and also that I'm a fairly ardent Calvinist (no thanks to my Arminian parents!).  If you don't know that, well, you'll figure it out soon (although you have no excuse since I just told you) as a fair share of my posts will likely touch on it in some manner.  I also overuse parenthetical statements, something that will likely annoy you now that I made you take notice of it.  In any case, I just wanted to throw a logical argument for predestination/reprobation (God's decision in eternity past to save some individuals and to damn others) out there to see what people think of it.  I'm not convinced it's unassailable, in fact I'd love to hear how people do assail it, but I think it's pretty strong.  Note that this argument is premised upon an orthodox Christian view of God, obviously it doesn't hold true if its assumptions are denied.

Premises:

1. God is all-knowing 
• This entails exhaustive knowledge of future events
• This entails exhaustive knowledge of contingency--the effects of any cause that may occur, actual or hypothetical.
2. God is all-powerful
• That is, He can do absolutely anything He wishes to do.
3. God is the Creator of all that is
4. God is intentional in His actions
• That is, He does nothing without considering the effects of His actions, He is wise.

Argument:

1. God foresaw absolutely the effects of His creation.  

• That is to say, in and prior to His creative act, He foresaw everything that would occur throughout all of time within His creation.  From premise 1 and 3.

     2.  God could have created any possible world He wished.

• God was capable of creating a world which differed from the actual world in any possible respect He desired.  For instance, He could have created a world that was exactly like the actual world except that the Douglas Fir was yellow, or He could have created a world that was under the dominion of giant intelligent slugs.  Each was equally possible.  From premise 2.

     3.  God could have created a world that was in all respects just like the real world, except that individual x was saved instead of not saved (or vice versa).  From premise 2 again.

     4.  The world God created, including all constituent parts, including the causes leading to each individual's salvation or non-salvation, was the one He intended.  From premises 1, 3, and 4.

Thus follows predestination.

I have a difficult time finding flaws in that argument, though they may be there.  

One attack on the argument is simply to deny the premises.  They either flatly deny the attributes of God (which I do not intend to defend at this time, as this argument is meant for evangelical Christians), or limit them.  They might say that God has no foreknowledge (a clearly unbiblical position), or that it doesn't extend to minor events or the results of "free-will".    I think this is an untenable position as well, since it's dubious, if not frankly impossible, for one to have certain foreknowledge of the "great events" of history without knowing all of the individual causes that led to that event.  Furthermore, the biblical witness records many times where God did foreknow the results of a free-will decision (see http://books.google.com/books?id=XdwY4id2kMUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_slider_thumb#v=onepage&q&f=false if you want mounds of biblical evidence).  Furthermore there are a number of more general references that state that God knows the ways of man better than man himself (for instance Prov 20:24).  

It is obvious that a knowledge which includes the foreknown results of free will decisions is more perfect than one that doesn't, and I believe that one should have some very solid evidence before they diminish the perfection of God.

Attempts to limit God's power seem even less tenable. Some have argued that God's control over human free is impossible because His character demands it (claiming that this case is similar to God's inability to lie not limiting his power).  First, I'm not sure which part of His character demands that.  You might argue (though I would disagree here too) that His love for our freedom or some such nonsense requires him to refrain from interfering, but here the premise is his capability to do all things, not His exercise of that capability.  

Premise 3 is impossible to deny without positing some other god or a creation that exists independently of (and co-eternally with) God.  Premise 4 is similarly difficult to deny withing a biblical worldview.  

It seems to me, then, that the arguments flow directly from the premises.  The main point is, that foreknowledge and omnipotence imply predestination.  A similar argument was used by Leibniz to argue that the real world is the best possible world that could ever exist (if it wasn't, God would have created some other world), an argument some have assaulted along some of the same grounds I mentioned above, but I don't believe successfully without denying biblical theism.  I'll think about it a little more, maybe I can find some more holes, how about you guys?

********

An aside:  Some deny arguments such as the above by resorting to irrationalism or pietism.  I won't attempt to refute those positions at the moment, but I certainly believe that if an argument's premises are correct, and its logic is correct, the conclusion is true.  This argument isn't a rigorous exegetical argument, proof texted extensively (though there are certainly such arguments for predestination), but if the premises are biblical and the logic is not faulty (and it may be here, that's what I'm trying to see), then the conclusion is true, whether it's about God or not.

Blog is goooooooooo!!!

Well, here I am.  I don't know if anyone is going to want to read what little I have to say or not, or if I will remain motivated enough to make regular postings, but I thought I'd give this blogging thing a shot.  I really feel a bit uncomfortable with all of the "why you should read me" or "why am I writing" stuff, so I think I'm going to skip it.  The only thing I'll say is that with most of what I expect to write, I will be hoping for some dialog so please comment with your thoughts, even if (especially if) you disagree with me.  I'll try not to be overly provocative and you try to be civil, deal?

I realize the design of the blog sucks, I'll probably try to improve it eventually, we'll see.