Craig Bartholomew, The Goodness of Creation and Its Ethical Implications

my privilege to welcome you to this installment of our Scripture ministry series we're pleased today to have the Reverend dr. Craig G Bartholomew with us I'll say a word about of introduction and then offer a word of Prayer for our time together he will then give us a lecture and we'll follow that with question and answer so we'll have should have a good time of question available for question answer afterwards if you could find your way for the question answers we have two microphones set up if you could find your way to those and sort of form a queue I'll help help moderate that so that way we're able to catch those for for the people who are watching online so they can hear the questions as well the Reverend dr. Craig G Bartholomew is the director of the Kirby Lange Institute for Christian ethics at Tyndale House Cambridge formerly he was senior research fellow at the University of Gloucestershire and recently the H Evan runner professor of philosophy and professor of religion and theology at Redeemer University College he's also adjunct faculty member at Trinity College Bristol and an Anglican priest his academic background is an Old Testament studies in hermeneutics he's also published widely across other fields including in philosophy and cultural studies he's edited and written many books most recently beyond the modern age in archaeology of contemporary culture which he co-authored with the Dutch economist Bob booths warred and contours of the cuy period tradition a systematic introduction as you can tell he's a person of wide interest and deep talent and we're pleased to have him with us today but we pray for us and then ask you to join me in welcoming dr. Bartholomew wood we give you thanks for this time together for this opportunity to reflect upon the goodness of your creation and indeed the goodness of the Creator we pray that we will come to deeper understanding and greater appreciation of that I pray that you will bless our time together give us clarity of mine and charity of spirit we pray in Christ's name Amen will you join me in welcoming dr. Bartholomew thank you very much and it's wonderful to be yea with you this is my first visit to Ted's so it's exciting and been wonderful to meet old friends and make new friends and so on and you can all hear me adequately right okay the soft English voice from across the ocean so the topic of my lecture today is the goodness of creation and its ethical implications a legacy of Neoplatonism and Christianity is the perennial temptation to doubt the goodness of creation the gravitational pull if I can put it that way of platonism is upwards and away from the visceral earthy textured materiality of the creation now let me say immediately that there is a legitimate and indispensable vertical orientation to human life since the doctrine of creation clearly articulates two rounds not at two kingdoms but a two realms theology of heaven and earth with earth as the abode of God it is not for nothing that Jesus teaches his disciples to pray our Father who art in heaven and it is this legitimate vertical dimension that has always made platonism seem so compatible with Christianity and indeed an important insight of Platonism is that to understand this world we need a reference point an anchor outside of the earthly concrete world in order to understand it but in the process Platonism denigrates this world amongst other things making the body the prison of the soul whereas while biblical Christianity as I understand it and I'm right of course where we can we can talk about that refuses to deify this world and makes it utterly subordinate to God and his created abode in heaven but nevertheless we take great delight and confessing that although it is not God it is God's handiwork and I love those Old Testament reference to the fact that heaven is God's throne and earth is his footstool but oh my goodness what dignity and glory to be the footstool of the Living God now the goodness of creation and its ethical implications I guess it's only someone like me who would think of such a silly wide-ranging topic for a lecture and I remind you that the doctrine of creation is complex a colleague and I have just finished a large doctrine of creation which I hope will be published next year but as large as ours is it pales into insignificance against Carl Bart's four volumes on the doctrine of creation but you know that tells me that the doctrine of creation is complex it's not a simple entity and we need to bear in mind that complexity and so the focus for my lecture today will simply be a text that I think we need to retrieve because it's under attack I think by lots of theologians and biblical scholars and that is Genesis 1 1 2 2 3 so first of all toe that's wonderful Ebru words Tove in Genesis 1 1 2 2 3 now in my opinion Genesis 1 1 2 2 3 is a carefully crafted complex literary text ok and by the way literally doesn't mean untrue what litora gets that is how this text is true and I think that's often a mistake evangelicals have made to think it's only certain types of text that can be true but poetry can be true in a profound way a novel can be profoundly true and so you know I want to alert you to the genre of Genesis 1 1 2 2 3 it's a carefully crafted in my opinion complex literary text and I draw your attention to several aspects of how to functions in this opening exquisite mind-blowing take off your feet book because you're standing on holy ground opening salvo of the great biblical meta-narrative now first of all the goodness of the whole of creation is clearly enunciated in Genesis 1 2 to 3 with its repeated that's extraordinarily interesting phrase the approval formula and God saw he told that it was good as is well known creation by word or Fiat is central to Genesis 1:1 2 to 3 what is not so commonly noted is that we find a pattern in this text not just of creation by word and God said let there be but also woven into that a creation now by is probably the wrong preposition but I'll use it anyway I'll put it in inverted commas or Jacques Derrida I would say I'll place it under erasure so you then have no idea what I mean by it but also of sight this is creation by words and of sight so with and God said let let it be which were so aware of this creation by word you also get this air this emphasis on vision and of sight and God saw that it was good the first such approval formula occurs in Genesis chapter 1 in verse 4 and intriguingly overall this formula occurs seven times in chapter one culminating in the tolls morote of Genesis chapter one and verse 31 now you know this is like so in your face that if you don't get it you you need to be thoroughly D familiarized with scripture and read it afresh again because the seventh fold occurrence the culmination I mean it is God this majestic king who is saying you know looking and saying ki Tov ki Tov Kito of kitto of ki Tov Tove my own I mean how could you not get it that this alerts us I know perfectly to the goodness of the parts and the whole of God's creation which is summed up in Genesis 1:1 2 to 3 in the mare ISM heaven and earth and you know what I mean by that the way you refer to the totality of something is to refer to the extremities heaven and earth is a way of saying and the whole is very good now the Jewish scholar am good captures something of the force of the repetition of the approval formula seven times when he writes in his own inimitable way and this is why I quite like him and reading him now you know that the name for God in Genesis 1:1 two to three is Elohim it switches to Yahweh Elohim which is very significant in chapters 2 and 3 a very unusual jack - position of those two names but good says this elohim is seldom an exaggerator but i think this is a remarkably understated sentence he's referring to Tove morote when you consider the extent of what elohim has done in a very short time and i think it is worthwhile to repeat that the meaning of the hebrew word told good carries a connotation not merely of general excellence or of moral excellence but also of beauty and you know i'm not trying to suggest this takes doesn't teach us very important cognitive things about creation but there is far more going on in this text then made doctrinal in a narrow sense cognitive stuff Keele and surer note that their approval formula and its repetition is reminiscent of hymns so i think we need to recapture something of this i mean that this is holy ground this is sacred ground and I think evangelicals would not only have we insisted on bringing our 21st century questions as the first port of call to this text but in the process we have denatured it and we have lost the sense of extraordinary wonder and all and so this is him Nick and one of the effects of this text should be let us worship so killed and sure say that and they also comment and I love this whenever it is God who says that something is good it is similar to a superlative you know tov tov' eeeem something like that I mean it's God who's saying that it's good that's the approval formula is important theologically developed in the narrative of Genesis 1 1 2 to 3 for particular reasons and we need to attend to these I don't find when I read doctrines of creation a lot of attention to the approval formula and so secondly the approval formula is part of creation part of God's a Tivoli of creation Klaus westerman Susanna's commentary on Genesis that and God saw that it was good as part of the structure of the narrative and is telling us that such recognition listen to this belongs to the very process of creation it's a very interesting you know who of us when we think of creation have thought that the approval formula is a constitutive part of the process of creation and then one of my favorite theologians dealer at Bonhoeffer rightly if you look at his creation and fall which was his first great exercise and theological interpretation and I love part you know his rumour brief and Buono for doing this work neither the theologians nor the political scholars knew what to do with this work because it didn't fit with any of the genres that the academic contexts were familiar with and they are the predecessors of what is called now theological interpretation which in my simple language is simply reading the text to hear God's address and I would hope that all of you would say are men you're allowed to are you at Ted's on an issue like that so in his winner's creation and fall born of her follows his chapter on the word with God's look it's a very perceptive doctrine of creation the word but it's also God's look and so you know that this I think is theologically very fertile stuff we have creation by word and then woven into that as we have the notion of gaze I think and God saw I would like to think and the ancient Near Eastern scholars can rugby tackle me verbally on this and they're most welcome to I think God saw is something akin to and God contemplated I don't think it's our I saw you in the supermarket yesterday I think this is much more and it hint of contemplative gaze so creation by word and in creation with gaze thirdly clearly the approval formula contains anthropomorphic language God is portrayed here as a God who sees now you know from Daniel chapter 5 in verse 23 which are this text has got me very excited we learned that God seeing is an activity that makes him distinctive from the other gods who are not gods this wonderful verse you have praised the gods of silver and gold of bronze iron wood and stone which do not see or hear or know okay but the God and whose power is your very breath they see here I think we've got an intertextual allusion to Genesis to the doctrine of creation is so foundational it's woven often in very deep and unrecognized ways through the fabric of Scripture it's the opening salvo of the grand drama of scripture and therefore is the backdrop to every other act and we will misunderstand the other acts if we don't get that first act right whose power is your very breath and to whom belong all your ways you have not honored seeing hearing and knowing or peculiarly predicates of the Living God and this brings us on to the contested terrain of the nature of religious language or language about God about which an enormous amount has been written here I just referred to brown Bryan Howells monograph in the eyes of God a metaphorical approach to biblical anthropomorphic language and how seeks to develop an appropriate metaphorical view of language about God and focus in particular and focuses in particular on God as seeing he explores the variety contemporary and ancient approaches to religious language or how we can speak about God and he concludes in some biblical anthropomorphisms are metaphorical but not strictly derived from the human arena because humans are created as the image of God there is an ontological basis for their descriptors to refer and refer accurately to God they describe God in a supernatural sense of these terms and yet one in which humans have potential to access thus it is misleading to speak of these attributes and actions as drawn from the human realm and somehow naively projected onto God rather the concepts originally understood from the employment and the human realm are applied to God metaphorically in such a way as to points to the divine attribute or action without fully defining it the meaning is then further delineated according to its contextualized usage or sampling the references recur this then becomes paradigmatic for human behavior in that context and sheds new light on how human behavior is then seen now you can ask me about this in question time but you know religious language and language about God there's long historical and contemporary debates in this area what I do find insightful about house approach are the following four points it recognizes the ontological or creational basis for such language now in you know this is something I'm going to come on to but in my opinion in philosophy and theology and any other discipline everything is transformed when you say to yourself I'm exploring this as part of my father's good creation I do not understand how you can do philosophy or theology or any other discipline without that transforming the discipline so this recognizes that it also recognizes that such language refers or points to God's action as such thirdly it leaves open the precision so one might be able to point truly to God without being able to say precisely how God sees but while holding on to the fact that it is true to say that God does see and so if fourthly it affirms the accuracy of such metaphorical language now I've been doing a lot of work on classical theism and and other things but what I do find here very helpful is that being made in the likeness of God I think we should expect human language about God to be anthropomorphic so this is not some strange projection onto that which can never be truly known but as Colin Gunton and other Eleanor stump and others have noted as if we are made in the likeness of God and this is God's creation the in biblical answer for morphism is exactly what we would expect and we should not think that such languages smoke without fire as it were it is smoked with the tsunami of tsunamis of fire it's the Living God and it's truthful reference to the Living God so how brings his approach to bear on genesis 1 and concludes that we find there that God sees objects and states of affairs we are not told how about seas but that he sees is stressed through repetition of the approval formula now this is what is so interesting with where he'll gets do with this so what the approval formula does it provides us and this is the whole point I think of the approval formula with a look at the creation through the eyes of God I think rhetorically that's what's going on in this literature you know why would we be told that God looks and he sees and he declares that Kito and how is saying one of the things and this is very important for me is that it's alerting us to the possibility of a God's eye perspective on the world and what happens when we look at the creation through the eyes of God Kyle says God seeing is a separate act from his naming blessing or creating and involves God's engagement with his creation through evaluating it and enjoying it this has the effect of establishing that creation as it was made in part and in total innately reflects the goodness of God and his creativity God seeing differs from that of humans in its cosmic scope but the seeing of God and humans overlaps in its engagement with its affirmation of and its enjoyment of the creation and so again we see the importance of attending to God seeing in our doctrine of creation now what are the commentaries have to say about this you know it's a bit like Monty Python and now for something completely different [Laughter] again I'm love commentaries but I just wish we could remarry you know or reconcile theology and commentary I mean isn't the aim of exegesis to help us to hear what God is saying to us today and doesn't this kind of rich theology shouldn't we find it in there well alas not always anyway I mean there's some great great commentaries on Genesis one of my favorites is that of my former colleague Gordon Wenham and he compares the approval formula with its related formula such as God's dividing finding these elements flexible in their order he also compares this to an artist's admiration of his work emphasizing the aesthetic qualities of what God sees Westermann highlights the idea that God's sight acknowledges the value of the work he says the procedure itself is quite clear a craftsman has completed her work he looks at it and finds that as a success or judges that it is good the Hebrew sentence includes the finding or judging in the act of looking furthermore Westerman says the light is good simply because God regards it as good the light in its goodness cannot be separated from God's attentive regard and he argues that while Tove has multiple meanings everyone in Genesis 1 is colored by the functional sense of being good for something seeing for westerman is a metaphor for a value judgment and this is why I do find me to a wisdom and very helpful that further functions as a catalyst for the response of the creation to the Creator westerman notes that the refrain of God seeing functions as a link to the praise of God God's regard which recognises that what he has done is good provides here the clearest link between the account of creation and the praise of the Creator the praise of the Creator is a continuation of the recognition by the Creator thus god's creation of the world and subsequent seeing of it as good establishes an initial pattern of good works followed by praise which later his people and then ultimately the totality of the creation become an echo and a grand symphony saying kitto he told for John Hartley the approval formula makes a qualitative judgment about God created tobin Genesis 1 he says a loaded term carrying four implications first of all they're about function so this is Western means what our being for secondly that which has just been created contributed to the well-being of the created order thirdly the new creation has aesthetic qualities fourthly it has moral force advancing righteousness on the now you know well I think my response to all of this is thank you and this very helpful so I find I learn a lot do you know what I find missing if I may say so is that too many biblical scholars I think lack a philosophy and a theology of language and then the default mode is to try and give a logically tight definition of Tolle's now if you know something about philosophy of language I had the privilege of teaching such a course for years at Redeemer University College so I've learnt a bit about this then I would argue that tophi are in terms of linguistics functions as something like a multi vocal symbol in other words it's a bit like you know I've also worked on the air on Ecclesiastes you know what does have all mean well it's just not you know and at the default mode and a kind of positivism in biblical studies is you've got to get the logical definition of one meaning it's just not how literature works you know when you see something that is just out of this world the most magnificent piece of art or you go and hear the best music concert you you've ever heard and someone says to you how was it and you just say it was just told do you see what I mean you can't immediately over just hold on Hebrew dictionary okay fulfilled the function you know the musical instruments perform properly it's sparking in all sorts of different directions some of it is just hard to capture of course it's saying that it fulfills the function of course that's what God wanted it to be but it's also so much more and if you try to limit ate it in the wrong way to put your theologian kevin van Hooser in another area you'll end up catching only half the fish and we want the whole fish you know so you know I think that's multi vocal it includes all for all sorts of things like of course it fulfills God's God's purpose of course it's affirming that it's exactly what he intended to bring into existence but it's just so much more I think there is an aesthetic dimension but there's also other dimensions just the sheer total visceral goodness of the whole creation and we mustn't get away from that now sana the Jewish commentator hopefully that helpfully notes the polemical dimension of the approval formula reality is imbued with God's goodness the pagan notion of inherent primordial evil is banished henceforth evil is to be apprehended on the morrow and not the mythological plane so as as typical of these narratives is a very strong polemical dimension in relation to alternative narratives of creation and you know you notice yeah then also of course that's in the ancient Near East but you could say the same about the Greek and Gnosticism and various forms of you know worldviews which have good and evil as Co eternal principles there's none of that yeah you know there's Fiat and there's gays and it's all told and told morote now then some comments on seeing and naming here I'm wondering a bit if you'll give me permission outside of Genesis 1 1 2 2 3 transgressing the boundaries the connection between God seeing and human seeing is picked up by westerman and this comes into focus in the intriguing comment after Genesis 1 in Genesis 2:19 in which God brings the animals and the birds to Adam now listen to this to see what he would call them you see this is where historical criticism has been so damaging you know you spend your life trying to argue that do you know Genesis 2 and 3 not a separate creation story I mean there's a gazillion ways so we've got to get away from that with academic rigor and then read these narratives sequentially so you've got this whole background of the approval formula now you've got Adam and that brings the the animals and the birds which are told to Adam to see what he would call them part of the radicality and the goodness of creation is the relative autonomy God grants to humankind and here we witness another kind of divine seeing as the God who has seen waits to see what Adam would name the birds and the animals in Genesis 1 God sees and names yeah he sees how Adam sees and names it's a very interesting theological move at stake here and I haven't got time to go into this are a huge number of issues including our understanding of Dominion the role and the role of philosophy and theology of language especially in post-modernism which I think may now be in demise language and naming is seen as inherently violent that is not the view here language and naming correctly exercised are wonderful gifts of God they are truly told for wasteman this naming marks the point where the man begins to execute his capabilities according to Westerman man gives the animals their names and thereby puts them into a place in his world very masculine comment in my opinion let me just repeat that again you've got ban gives the animals their names and thereby puts them into a place in his world in my view there's more complex relation allottee and play that leads to a much more helpful view of the naming indeed one that is far less anthropocentric and the unhelpful sense now the spirit I think of naming is gloriously captured in a Canadian author Harriet's experience of what is what awoke his interest in birds in his wonderful wonderful book grass skies song he said the thought of creatures being endemic to the place I lived stirred something to life in my brain I began to see that learning the names of things mattered not so much in the possession that afforded as in its capacity to call for things from generality into particularity that allowed for admiration familiarity even wonder Ian Ramsey the theologian says and I think this is much more insightful than westerman if the act of naming signifies anything about the name giver it is the quality of discernment that's when Haram names the animals it is more appropriate to understand this as an act of his discerning something about these creatures an essence which has already been established by God now you know I've been talking to Jeffrey and others but if you don't know about what I think is the most exciting thing going on in the philosophical world today I really think you should and that is Catholic French phenomenology in my view it is by far the most exciting thing in which these Catholic French phenomenologist SAR weaving across philosophy and theology Immanuel Phalke says of paul ricoeur that in history his generation philosophers could only approach the threshold of theology and felt now celebrates that we can go across them and also in the midst of their work the most unbelievably insightful exegesis of which I want to give you an example so Jean Louie fret e n has written a book on philosophy of language called the arc of speech a R K not a RC and the references to know his arc now this by the way is Assyria academic publication takes the image of the art from Noah's Ark his reflection on Adams naming of the animals is acute and representative of his view of language as a form of hospitality much more essential he says unworthy of consideration is the fact that this story makes human speech into the first arc the animals have been gathered for human speech and brought together in the speech which names them long before they are brought together in Noah's Ark to be saved from the flood and the destruction it brings their first guardian their first safeguard is that of speech and so the way reads this is that the naming of the animals remember God is seeing to see what animal do with us says this is the first big test of Adam will he use speech to dominate in Westmont sturms to place animals in his world or will he use speech to safeguard the integrity of the other nests of the animals that God has declared tolls so that language functions like an ark this is just in my opinion exquisite stuff like George Steiner real presences relates his view of language to creation he says in the account of creation given in the first chapter of Genesis we see brought into play so that the game of the world can be played a word and a gaze and they are inseparable porcelain was not the first to note the common root and German of denken and Duncan to think and to thank but as cratan notes to think is to thank but for this to be true to thank must be to think Railly truly in other words to see our quote you know I want to keep closing kriti in but I will stuff after this the world itself is heavy with speech it calls on speech on and on our speech and response and it calls only by responding itself already to the speech that created it how could such speech be foreign to the world when it subsists through faith only by the word the speech we utter about the world does not come from beyond the world it is no more a stranger to the world than we are now naming extends far beyond naming animals it's about the use of language in her exquisite book caring for work words and a culture of lies Marilyn Shonda McEntire laments the depletion and erosion of North American English I'm allowed to say that because I come from Britain now and you can extradite me back there tonight she looked back to a time in the history of English when to converse was to foster community to commune with to dwell in a place with others language the naming are a central element to being fully human through being attentive through seeing the particularity zuv God's rich and diverse creation with an amazing group of writers berry Lopez's edited a book called home-ground language for an American landscape an alphabetical resource aimed at a recovery of Alva of a vocabulary for land and place as Lopez notes in this introduction we put a geometry to the land back country front range high desert and pick out patterns and at pool and rifle swale and riffles whale and rise basin and range we make it through both north 40 vivid bird foot Delta and humorous detroit riprap it is a language that keeps us from slipping off into abstract space yeah we begin to see just how profound in my opinion is the approved formula and Genesis one and you know if there's one thing just from this lecture I want you to take away you know we haven't said the final word about the Bible you know I'm an evangelical card-carrying etc etc but you know to think we are the Bible people and then we do this you know thin exegesis without any of the rich extraordinary overtones of scripture for the whole of creation this should bring us to repentance you know scripture has so much to say in all these areas so Genesis one opens out in my opinion into a theology and philosophy of the gaze and of the word of perception and of language contra post-modernism God's gaze and affirmation means that the world has a discerner noble shape so that philosophically if you put together let there be and Quito philosophically you are pushed as mark know it long ago recognized to some form of critical realism when it comes to philosophy we do not constitute the entire world there is a discernible shape to the world which can be known that's in philosophy what we call realism to allude to George Steiner whose book real presences I think is must reading a grammar of creation for that is what he calls for means contra post-modernism that being is indeed saleable contemplating the creation with respect and Wonder and bringing it into expression whether in poetry or science is one of the ways in which we as humans image God Genesis one invites us through the approval formula to see the world as God does and with him you know the approval form you know it's almost a pronouncement formula and it has resonances for me with the baptism of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration you know where God pronounces and here you've got this pronouncement over the whole creation Tolls morote toe now a God's eye view one of the things reasons I think this is such extraordinary literature now I don't know your view of the composition of Genesis 1 to 11 if you have the authoritative view on that you must see me afterwards because I need it ok and I'm very conservative on historical critical issues and that sort of thing but we also have to think hard about that now I think I don't think Israel only discovered a doctrine of creation late in their history if you're living in the ancient Near East you would have had one virtually from the beginning but I do think Genesis 1 verse 11 is a bit like I learned this from a prof that I studied under in South Africa is a bit like prophecy in Reverse and I find it helpful to think of Genesis 1 to 11 like that so it's like you know because the telescope's an enormous amount of time and that and it tells us truly the story but in using particularly literary literary tropes and other things a friend of mine says Genesis 1 to 11 is a bit like being in the midst of Israel and Israel looking over her shoulder to see where she's come from now if that is true it is written for believers who live after the fall so that that's why I think this is such extraordinary literature this is important because this side of the fall it is often only by faith that we can see and affirm the goodness of the creation amidst the collateral damage of the fall and sin we sometimes find ourselves in job like situations in which it is now impossible to see a world charged with the grandeur of God's glory as gerald manley hopkins so eloquently put it Hopkins is interesting because he was if you know his story he was no stranger to severe depression and yet out of that darkness he was able to write of Christ who plays in 10,000 places a needle are a pilgrim in tinkers tinker's Creek there's another contemplative of creation and she wrestles and who worked with the shadow side of the world and yet do you remember how pilgrim at tinker Creek ends I want to quote it again and again and again she surfaces with a tremendous sense of God and His goodness and these are the final words of pilgrim at tinker Creek and like Billy Bray I go my way and my left foot says glory and my right foot says our men in and out of Shadow Creek upstream and down exultant in a day's dancing to the twin silver trumpets of praise you see in some sense I think the doctrine of creation implies that in some sense lightness was right to argue that this is the best of all possible worlds as part nerds but in the order of created existence as such it can be nothing better than what is bought rightly says towards the end of a nuanced interaction with live Nets and as followers he must and listen to this and this is why I love Bart I disagree with Bart you don't have to love people only if you agree with them you know some of the people you love the most are the ones you have the biggest fights with I love part listen to this live Nets must be taken seriously and dogmatix because he too although in a very different way tried to sing and in his own way did in fact sing the unqualified praise of God the Creator in his relationship to the creature okay now I have ten minutes and I'm nearly there the comprehensive dimensions of the doctrine of creation God does not need to look to see if his handiwork is good I hope you understand that but he delights in doing so and how I ask you my brothers and sisters can we deny the goodness of light earth sky see the planets the stars and the Sun the animals of old and the human and human kind how can we deny the goodness of that if God reflects upon them and declares them Kito there are many dimensions to the goodness of creation and I think philosophically and theologically that could be opened up much more it means that they perfectly fulfill God's intention it doesn't mean that there's no room for development one of the things with Tove and Tove note and God resting is that the creation is poised for all the hidden potentials that are built within it to be unlocked by humankind in a development of the creation so Tove does not mean final finished but it does mean fundamentally good it means that in its creaturely mode of chairs and the goodness of God as bark perceptibly notes creaturely goodness is the benefit of creation you see the goodness of creation and the comprehensiveness of creation go together by the comprehensiveness of creation I draw attention to the multi-faceted and rich diversity of the world in which we live including its involved in both dynamic potential for development it is in for example the divine speeches in the latter part of job that we receive a very strong affirmation of the diversity of creation in job 38 to 42 we hear of the foundation of earth the boundaries of the sea its great depth and its garment the clouds the mysteries of light and darkness and the newness of the dawn each morning the varieties of weather snow hail rain lightning wind desert places where no human lives the constellation of stars the wonderful diversity of animal life and whatever we make bahama and Leviathan if the divine speech has emphasized the so-called natural world we should not forget the celebration of culture making in job 28 with its use of the metaphor of mining by definition do you remember the Marisa heaven and earth the doctrine of creation relates to all that is apart from evil which is a parasite on the good creation and so Bart rightly notes that it is our duty and this is what we are taught by the self revelation of God and Jesus Christ to love and praise the created order because as has made manifest in Jesus Christ it is so mysteriously well pleasing to God now evangelicalism of which I count myself firm adherent in particular has been dogged by various forms of sacred secular Jew ilysm and and I thought you know I lived in England before and I used to say on some moments I think this heresy comes from America and we should send it back there now I returned to England and it's alive and well in Cambridge I think but you know what is the problem with evangelicalism this is something I hope you're exploring at Ted's that this is pervasive deep dualism between sacred and secular I was converted into evangelical church in South Africa amidst the hell of racist apartheid and that journalism prevented most evangelicals from being able to identify the problem with racism that stayed us in the face every day and you know what it does in America now of course it's that's a good example because the whole world could see that racism was an idol you have your own idols and if you are embraced in a sacred secular dichotomy what you will do is produce Christian versions of the idols of the day it doesn't mean you're not a cross in South Africa we had wonderful born-again bible-believing evangelistic missional racist Christians that's possible because I have seen it with my own eyes and so a manifestation of this vocational pyramid with the most spiritual vocations being those dealt dealing with the soul namely pastors and missionaries so this is what I was converted into if you wanted to follow Christ fully the only place was the seminary and in fully fully II was the mission field and less fully was the past route and then you know the feeding chain just deteriorated businessmen were okay I mean it's a filthy world but they they ties nicely so we want them there right at the bottom I mean the artists my goodness mean they're always asking for money they barely eat out in existence and what do they do they sits and thinks and they produce us funny things sometimes they help with the church bulletin now that's redemptive see this is the sacred sir but it's so pervasive and it is a stench I think in the nostrils of God and it prevents it absolutely hamstrings the witness of the church and it prevents us from ever being able to say with God of his creation ketose that's what's at stake in this and here is where I started in our return there we witness the re-emergence of a neoplatonism which the doctrine of creation utterly resists as you see Eugene Peterson so wonderfully notes if we are Christians we are all in holy orders there is no such thing as a part-time servant of the Lord Christ we referred above to Genesis 2:19 Harris and Genesis as a final comment on Redemption so how does Redemption relate to creation some of you will be asking well that's an important question because we referred above to Genesis 2:19 Harris and Genesis 2:2 three apart from intriguingly in the mouth of the serpent who only refers to elohim when he speaks the narrator uses the very unusual name you are ver Elohim this is pregnant theologically a reminder it is because where do you go for the theology of Yahweh ax Exodus 3 and Exodus 6 right this great Redeemer God who rescues his people from slavery in Egypt and in the words of Exodus 19 brings you to myself that is Yahveh why juxtapose and Genesis two and three you are ver with Elohim it as a reminder that the Covenant elation Olave who rescues his people and brings them to himself is the creator Elohim this is a vital doctrines for adoption of creator of redemption as evangelicals we are in such haste to get to the cross and the resurrection which I fully understand that we bypass the doctrine of creation and the we thereby end up with a diminished doctrine of the person and work of Christ as one author has put as creation is the very stuff of redemption with the biblical meta-narrative moving from the great Park of Eden to the new heavens and the new earth as we retrieve the doctrine of sanctification part of Genesis ones threes discipline of us is to remind us that there are different ways of seeing different ways of judging the good neither we nor our world our God but our world is his footstool and we are part of that footstool and that's worthy of attention care wonder and contemplation and so I close with an extract from a medieval theologian Bonaventure er that I I do enjoy I mean this really lays it on the line so you better tighten your seat belts whoever therefore is not enlightened by such splendor of created things is blind whoever is not awakened by such art cries as deaf whoever does not praise God because of all these effects is dumb whoever does not discover the first principle from such clear signs is a fool therefore open your eyes alert the ears of your spirit open your lips and apply your heart so that in all creatures you may see here praise love and worship glorify and honor your God lest the whole world rise against you for because of this the whole world will fight against the foolish on the contrary it will be a matter of glory for the wise who can say with the Prophet you have gladdened me Lord by your deeds and in the works of your hands I will rejoice how great are your works Lord you have made all things in wisdom the earth is filled with your creatures amen [Applause] well thank you we have time for questions we also have two microphones set up you can make your way to these microphones we'll open the floor for questions I guess I can begin with a question while you're coming I appreciate this very much we do sometimes have faced these tendencies too as it were to devalue creation sometimes it seems though that there can be a tendency to go the other direction as well but so let me put put it to you this way is there any significance and if so what might it be to the use of toe here rather than Tommy in other words creation has said repeatedly and forcefully and powerfully to be good but not in genesis one to be perfect yeah well I think I don't know I mean I would love to so I think you probably have views on this so I think one of the ways to get at this would be you would have to ask what does good mean and what is perfect me okay and of course words have meanings in particular contexts so if the the use of Tove rather than Tamim if that means that creation is less than good then I think no there's no significance on that and then you know the biblical scholars could help us here the uses of Tamim in the rest of the Old Testament so the notion of perfection is a very interesting one so what I tried to argue here is that Tove part of the goodness of creation is that it's open to development towards a tell us so so I think goodness doesn't mean that this is the the final final product but I'm very interested to know if one is saying that Tove is used rather than Tamim there's something going on here what what is going on I don't I don't know I believe it was Fred time who did make that distinction well in order to allow for the possibility of death amongst [Music] yeah so that I think is the background possibly to your question yeah this distinction between a world that can be created good but not necessarily perfect in the sense that there's no element of death whatsoever thank you yeah well thank you so that's illuminating and so quick response in the doctrine of creation that my colleague and I have been writing we've deliberately not let science set the agenda so you know almost everything that I see on creation nowadays is about the creation science dialogue and then I think very my fear about that philosophically is that you end up in trying to correlate and what you concede are the epistemological foundations of modern science I'm not willing to concede that so my approach is now not that these questions are unimportant I think that scientific questions are very important but what has helped me a lot is to try and ask questions like what would Genesis 1 1 2 2 3 have meant to Israelites now it's very unlikely in my opinion that they were even on their radar screen was the issue of animal death maybe I mean engineers of scholars could help you but I don't think so so I think Genesis you know we have to read it it obviously had huge meaning to to the early Israelites who heard this creation narrative and then I think when we've listened to that we can then ask how does Genesis 1:1 2 to 3 address our 21st century scientific questions that's my strategy which is a bit of a cop-out I get it but so I don't know the answer to animal death I'm just not sure that Genesis is trying to address that so then to argue that Tova's used deliberately to create space for that it sounds to me too much like letting 21st century questions set the agenda and I'm reluctant to do that thank you for then rich and wonderful and I would save him pastoral lecture I I want to draw out some implications you said that God does not need to see in order to to approve the creation and I say hearty amen but of course that's not so with us so I want to think about our our gays the gays of humans on the creation and I'm reminded of of a little book by a scholar named Elaine Elaine Scarry on beauty and being just Harvard it's a book she uses with first-year students there and I'm used it with my students in the past so if you'll permit me a bit of summary so the it's just two essays one on beauty and being wrong and on beauty and being fair and so instead of giving in like an account of beauty she's giving a kind of phenomenology of the experience of beauty well and in the second essay she pushes back on the the political criticism that the gaze always objectifies and and returns to classical notions of a beautiful object or person actually have any power over the one gazing at it so so here she tries to establish the ethical relations between the viewer and the thing viewed and I'm not sure exactly how they're connected I don't know if one comes first before the other but in the first essay she talks about what's just called on beauty and being wrong the experience of having seen something and not perceived its beauty right or or overvalued the beauty of something and so there she's she's kind of arguing for kind of epistemological humility so I wonder just to get your thoughts on that to what degree is our gays dependent upon an epistemological humility that we've seen creation for what it is well and assess it rightly and how is that connected to our ethical relation to it that if we behold it as beautiful we then have a responsibility to care for it mmm okay well well thank you so I haven't read scary's book but I've taken notes oh that's what I love I go home with a book list and it's growing so there's always so much more to learn so you know just a big big area so just first of all I think one thing Genesis one is saying to us is that there's a way of seeing that is normative okay so so you know this is that I hear overtones of the postmodern sort of thing that you know to name or to see is inherently violent and that is just a massive mistake okay so what what I found just a heuristic device if any of you have read el Walters book creation Regained he makes the distinction between structure and direction and it's a heuristic device that is just hugely useful so speech is a good structure of the creation but it can and a foreign broken world be misdirected so you know there is the gaze and this is a psychologist friend taught me this at University College I taught at in Canada what we don't want as humans and what I don't want us to be acclaimed what I do long for is to be seen for who I am there's a seeing that is just exquisite it's the recognition this is why Livy nice I think is on to something when he grounds ethics in the face of the other so you know that's where post-modernism I think is dreadfully unhelpful now there's also the gaze of the foyer that's the misdirected gaze but the response to misdirection is not to say the gazes irretrievably broken its to recover the gaze you know and these are just extraordinarily beautiful and human things the other thing just which I would need to think about a lot more I think there's an overemphasis on beauty and this goes back to you know Greek philosophy the true the good and the beautiful so somehow we think that something is only good if it's beautiful but and so my friend Kelvin seer felt an aesthetician he is argued that the heart of aesthetics is not beauty but elusive ot that things are elusive and so you know it means if I can use play with language sometimes that which is very ugly can be very very beautiful so I think I'm a bit wary of just where we go with this Greek tradition of beauty I'd love the students to ask some questions but no no no mark mark over but I do want to know what the students are thinking love to you I'm curious if you can use what you said there at the end to go back to the question that came up earlier about the question of animal death because I was musing on that as well if kind of what you're doing with Tobi is to try to press us to be able to look at creation and with God be able to say yes that is toad it's good what do we do about the things in creation that we look at that are really difficult for us to describe using the language of goodness and beauty and I here what are your more specific not just animal death but at least what looks to us in creation like purposeless suffering mmm so an animal dying not just for the sake of nourishing some other animal but suffering in a way that doesn't even have any purpose to it that's really difficult for me to look at and declare Tove or beauty in there your first response made me a little bit nervous if I just go - well that's not what they had in mind with knowing that right Genesis 1 right that seems to retract the to blame and waste I think you know then as you were talking about beauty and ugliness at the end I was wondering might resource that to respond to those concerns or if you would go in a different okay I think I want to hear from the students so you know so I'm just gonna make a few initial comments and I do the scientific questions are tremendously important what I've been concentrating on is a constructive adoption of creation first and then to have a look at science and the way theory construction develops and science is not neutral so there's all sorts of things there but so one of the things marked that which I tried to draw attention to which is so amazing to me I mean you know being an Israelite was not always easy like a they they were pretty bad they got beaten up there at the center of forces of empire that would stomp all over them and do all sorts of things but I think it's out of the midst of that experience comes Genesis 1 looking back over their shoulders that that to me is almost miraculous so Genesis 1 I think is a text for post fallen creatures you know so that I'll find so amazing that there is a way and that's where I think I need a large you know the spending time I mean this she reflects on all the stuff and pilgrimage ticketing could Creek the strangeness of what animals do in animal behavior and yet she ends up in a place like Genesis 1 so I find that very interesting I don't know you know the the question of animal death I mean all the stuff of course is on the table now in theodicy and oceans of divine discourse and all that sort of thing and their different view views on the on this matter so and certainly it's possible that there is a type of animal death that could be included under goodness some would argue there's a type of human diet I mean I think that's a bit more problematic theologically but yeah so so you know that's kind of the beauty and the ugliness thing is just it's not to make you sad I just don't know what we mean or what I mean when I use the word beauty and socia felt as in his aesthetics he has moved away from the Western Greek tradition which makes Beauty the sort of apex of the aesthetic rather arguing that the aesthetic is about elusive 'ti and it then brings in the possibility of that which is ugly being aesthetically very good but I wouldn't quickly move that towards you know and we're living in such interesting time so I'm fascinated by the work being done on the emotional lives of animals you know we're finding out that animals are sentient creatures in a way that we hadn't imagined possible so I think the issue of animal pain is very important to me and and how one fits that together so part of my response to marks very good questions would be I learnt a long time ago you know in my early days as an evangelical and believing in the inerrancy of the Bible it felt like I lived in a house of cards and if one card went the whole thing so it led regularly to major panics and then it was John Wenham who helped me in his book easter enigma I think it was on a lot of these things I don't we don't know the answers so you wait and you work and you think and you pray and you wait and you work and you think can you pray some of them I think we just will have to live for the time being saying there is an apparent contradiction here and we will live with that contradiction thank you very much for that really helpful lecture in Genesis 1 2 the words Tohu vova often translated formless and void and you mentioned when Holmes commentary he paraphrases that as a gaping abyss is there any space for seeing in your view the goodness of Genesis one as a goodness that's sort of set over and against this will this dark chaos oh that is at the beginning and the reason it's it comes up in connection to these other questions is that amazing quote from annie dillard that you quoted comes at the end of this book where she's going on and on about the brutality so it's a sort of statement of goodness over and against the recognition of chaos okay do you see any part any room for that in Genesis one so I want to quote call part on this an answer is nine no and the reason I say that is part argued for this view that what Genesis 1 and 2 about is the shadow side of creation which is the wrist guard stakes and creating and it's the threat that always hangs over creation the darkness the abyss so you know if you and the reason I say 9 is I have a chapter coming out in a book that was a lecture given at Trinity Western University on a theological interpretation and Genesis 1 verse 2 in which I compare Bart's reading with Bonhoeffer's reading and I think Bonhoeffer is the better more biblical reading so so I don't and amongst some ancient near-eastern scholars that whole thing comes from Gunkel who found you know that Genesis 1 verse 2 I think Bart has this quote that Genesis 1 verse 2 is a treasure chest of mythological so and it is now among some ancient Near Eastern scholars Scurlock johanna Scurlock comes to mind who are saying it's not even in view there so but i do not think i think much more the formless and void is it's the initial stage of creation so I think it's the first step if you like in creation side think darkness and those are bad things I think darkness is a good thing and and then what you have is the the stage-by-stage the formation of the world as we know it and then of course in other parts of scripture job three and in other places d creation is the kind of move back to that initial stage but I don't think she bartends up saying and the spirit hovered over the waters you know Bart has to DC's this is the Holy Spirit but he has to immediately marginalize that this is not the word so so so I think no but that's my view it but it is a contested text job thank you for your insight on the cymatics of toph I really enjoyed that I wondered whether you had any comment or idea about how your idea about seeing in Genesis 1 God seeing the creation is good relates to Genesis 3 when Eve says that the tree is good for food actually sees that it's good for food it almost feels like she's going almost as far as God is going and affirming the goodness of the tree then she misinterprets the function so that the goodness of seeing has an ethical dimension maybe you have some thoughts on dad yeah well thank you so see this is where I think theological interpretation should be all over this stuff and what I what I'm trying to do in this lecture is to say to you a feast awaits are we eating at this feast I think it's a feast that awaits so you know there's so many interesting things so and this is structure and direction God sees and the text I think is inviting us to see the world the way God sees it amidst the brokenness and the collateral damage of the fall so that with any day Lord we can rise up amidst the struggle and say Kito's okay now what happens with the dialogue between the Serpent's now this is literature it's not straightforward historical narrative you know the last time I saw a speaking snake I've been smoking I'm sorry I hadn't been but do you know what I mean if someone comes and says you know there's a massive snake outside there and do you know what it told I mean we would say just hold on we just have to make a phone call you know but so so this is now I'm not saying it's not the you know I think the race of scripture tells us this is a shortened this is the devil but there's nothing in the text that says that it's a speaking snake and then what it does and I think this is where it's so interesting it evokes the imagination of even such a way that she sees in a way she hadn't seen before but I think what you're absolutely right now and this is very subtle because the beauty which is there you know it becomes twisted it's it's very desirable so and this is where you know for example in the debates about homosexuality and that kind of thing we're often so simplistic so Augustine describes homosexual desire as disordered love it doesn't mean it's not love it's disordered and so there's a seeing which is disordered with catastrophic consequences but it's always connected to what's actually there I mean it's not that evac'ing is is smoked something in his imagining it it's there but she's seeing it in a way that is distorted I thank you the danger of hugging this oh thank I want to thank you as well for a very stimulating lecture thank you can you help us understand how where to see and understand the creation right now there seems to be a tension running through Scripture we have the opening chapters of Genesis the creation is very good and and yet there's the reality of Adams disobedience and it seems to have a cosmic effect or which presumably laughs on to the present and we see this tension reflected in script their heavens declare the glory of God the firmament claims his handiwork and yet Paul can also speak about the whole creation groaning so there seems to be something I understand how we're to see script creation right now well I think you've just helped us you know so much so there's I mean this is multiple metaphors going on yeah I think but to refer back to the earlier thing I do think that's what Genesis 1 is therefore it's Israel in the midst of the struggle to be always people looking over her shoulder to where she came from so this is not I don't think Genesis one was written prefault okay this is a you know this is literature that emerges in the midst of history but prophetically looks back and so it's an encouragement I think in the midst of the groan and the agony and what the heck is going on and where is God to find our way to the point where we too are able to say kiito's about the whole of the creation so and the other thing which I ended with is the and this I would appeal to you know let me ask you this question why what is God trying to do in salvation and you know let me just put two questions I would often say to my students quoting the artists or ian hunter oak marker why does god save us and they would always come up with the good evangelical answers to go to heaven because he loves us in cetera do you know what drop markers on Souris which i think is you and Gail Dion and the true sense of the word God saves us to make us fully human now that I think is good news that's a doctrine of creation so you know so it's groaning it's broken you know call Bart is 5060 years ahead of his time talking about animal rights and how slaughterhouses should have a verse from Romans written over there and you know so and it's not just that the creation is broken it's that the creation is broken to a large extent because we break it again and again and again you know we it's Chesterton what's wrong with the world I am I mean this is a very poignant insight so one of the things I think we have to recover is that you know God so that the world that He gave His only begotten Son of course individual salvation is very much part of that but when you become a Christian you are invited to accompany God in the missio Dei which is a recovery of God's purposes for the whole of creation and so this is my Genesis one is so important in the midst of being Israel surrounded by all these dreadful nations you've got to find a way of saying of the whole of the creation he told so that redemption is the recovery of God's purposes for creation and leading it towards the goal for which God always intended and then built into that I would build on notions of common grace and so on that hold back the possibilities of extraordinary evil and so on and so forth but thank you great question thank you all of you I really appreciate this will you join me in thinking [Applause] you

Channel: Henry Center

Views: 1,138

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: creatio, creation project, ethics, goodness, science and theology

Id: C3QVx9aRpqs

Length: 82min 58sec (4978 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/SizerTheBroken]

No specific endorsement. I've just been getting into Bartholomew lately and I found this talk and it was interesting to me. Just curious what y'all would make of it.