Late last week the BioLogos blog Science and the Sacred posted another video clip featuring NT Wright. In this clip he discusses the dating of Genesis 1-3 and what he sees as the impact of these texts on first century Judaism and the early Christians. This clip struck me as interesting in the context of our vigorous discussion of Brian McLaren's new book "A New Kind of Christianity" on Monday as well as the context of our general discussion of science and faith.
How important is Gen 1-3 for understanding the gospel? which, of course, leads us to consider the question: What is the gospel of Jesus Christ?
Starting about 1:55 in the clip Wright says:
... the big story which is there is that humans are given their identity as wonderful creatures within a wonderful God-given world, and that nevertheless they blow it. That Israel was called to be the people through whom God would remake and redo that project and they had blown it as well, which kind of then sets you up for the question what happens next. And unless you've got that double picture in mind there is all sorts of stuff in Matthew Mark Luke John Acts, Paul, etc. which you just never understand.
The OT is essential to understand the gospel. The point of Genesis is not the age of the earth or the snake and tree. There is a functionality, a message, which transcends the literal narrative. Those who worry about dismissing Genesis as "ANE myth" do well to be concerned. There is a theme beginning in Genesis 2 and 3 - repeated many times throughout the OT - of failure and exile, failure and consequence. This is the backdrop for the story of the gospel. Without this backdrop nothing makes sense.
So as I see it at this time the idea that gospel is God's peaceable kingdom established through the power of love is right - but does not dig deep enough. The kingdom is not established through the power of love, but through the power of His love. The gospel is that God through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus did for us what we were unable to do for ourselves - he broke this cycle of failure, took the consequence. This is what enables the inauguration of the kingdom of God.
The understanding we develop from studying God's creation may change the way we interpret the framework for telling this story in Genesis - but it doesn't change the story or the history leading up to the incarnation.
What do you think? What is the functionality of Genesis and how does it inform our understanding of the gospel?
If you wish to contact me you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net
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"It demands an unshakable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as the only source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research"
Yep. The Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution convinced people that things CAN be known, that complex things can be built based on well understood cause and effect, and that certainty is possible. So a faith open to "questioning and critical research" is a faith that lacks certainty. Combine that with growing anti-intellectualism worldwide, and you have a recipe for the growth of fundamentalist, literalist religions.
People are losing respect for "expertise", for hard-won knowledge and understanding, for the benefits of education on any topic - be it religion, science, history, whatever. Whether you are a naturalist skeptic, or a religious person who believes there is more to faith than just the printed word of the Book, this anti-intellectual, anti-critical thinking trend is quite disturbing.
The candle in the dark that Thomas Ady and (much later) Carl Sagan refer to is definitely starting to flicker.
Dana #56
You said:
'Truth is a "bigger thing" than mere data'
I don't have a problem understanding that there's more to it than data, but I don't think that means the data is meaningless either.
@Everybody
The common theme here is the gentle rebuke "yeah, but you're just using your Enlightenment driven rationalism to interpret ANE texts". Certainly I think many Evangelicals and Creationists do tend to think through a rationalist/literalist framework, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about.
My concern or quandary is sort of a "what's next?". Do we all need a PhD in ANE studies to understand what God's trying to say in the OT? This is a real practical concern if I can't trust that I can really just sit down with my Bible anymore and understand it. It's not that I'm lazy but it feels like this means my interpretation or understanding of Scripture now lays in the hands of fallible, corruptible, biased people rather than Scripture itself. At least with the more traditional Reformation view I have only myself to blame for bad interpretation! :-)
I'm also concerned with "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". I understand why it's important to see how the original authors and readers would understand a text and the ANE context within which it was "birthed", but I still don't like seeing things like "the details don't matter" or "the big picture is the only purpose". I'm especially leery about the extreme end of this thinking that drains any claim of physical or objective truth from the Bible and leaves only "Jesus the moral teacher" and "God as our actualized selves". So I think there indeed needs to be some balance. I think Michael (#58) said it so good I'll repeat it again:
"In some sense we are not what God intended. Exactly how that came to be from a factual-historical view may never be known to us. That's okay. God does not owe us an accounting of every aspect of what has happened. He reveals only that which is necessary for us to know and we know we are sinners in need of redemption and the world is not as God intended. Through the life, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus we have salvation and the hope of a new creation."
Amen!
Amen- no argument from me on that :)
Dana
JHM,
Ahhhh now I see what you're getting at a little better. Yeah, I totally agree that we have to be careful to not make things too obscure or hard to understand, and really need to exercise discernment when engaging in critical examination or deciding what's applicable today. I get a bit antsy myself when we start talking about how this works out when something makes us uncomfortable or is culturally unacceptable to us.
I don't follow that "details don't matter" connects to "Jesus as a moral teacher" though. I don't think the two quite make it since that is decidedly more than anything to do with details. I think you're connecting inspiration and "truth" to "fact"...the only problem there is the gospels themselves dash any hope of truth relying on fact since they all tell the same stories with distinctly different details. (ie, Matthew 20, Mark 10, Luke 18)
Obviously, one could go entirely too far with this, but that's a danger in anything. You don't need a PhD to understand anything said so far (I haven't even finished my bachelors), and I'd be really worried if someone told you there was something you did need one for. It seems to me though that part of pursuing God is asking "what were you trying to say?" which leads to examining more than just the words on the page. What did the author think it meant? What were the cultural references? What were the actual words used and what do they mean?
I don't think you need to spend a ton on books or an expensive education. It's just down to exploring and seeking. I've been continually amazed at the depth of meaning things have taken when I've done that, and I'm not just talking controversial stuff.
The gentle rebuke (which I'm not sure 'rebuke' is the right word here since it implies something of a hand slap) isn't in saying details are irrelevant. It's in saying that your worldview is not arbiter of what scripture MUST talk like to be true or inspired (or even inerrant). Scripture was written first to those in the time of its creation and secondly to the rest of us. That's not to say that you need some crazy education to get anything from it (anyone who says that is leading you off into cult land), but that trying to force ancient texts into speaking on our 'level' is going to leave a lot of richness and depth still hidden in the field.
Am I understanding you correctly?
oh and I actually agree with your last post, if that got lost in there somewhere.
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