Craig D. Allert: Early Christian Readings of Genesis One (Book Launch)

[Music] so thanks for coming first of all there's a lot of people here who deserve a big note of thanks my family my friends many of here many of whom are here tonight my colleagues in rels may me of whom are also here tonight my colleagues from other disciplines and other departments hands Boersma students in my classes and students who have taken the time tonight to come to this lecture for extra credit and I know who you are I think I especially grateful to the three gentlemen here to my right to dr. Cummings for moderating for doctors Spencer and Royals for their kind responses right so I beg your forgiveness once more if I become too attached to my notes dr. Cummings is known to crack the whip quite hard if we go over time so I want to make sure we stay on time so there's enough time for interaction from from you guys so I've been to my fair share of events like this and if you're anything like me you probably haven't read the book right so think about it that means I face a rather daunting task I need to summarize about 325 pages of material that took me around three years to write in about 25 or 30 minutes I kind of feel like the sentiment expressed in this well-known sign my three kinds of service good cheap and fast but you can only pick two so let me adjust that a little bit to this presentation I offer three kinds of presentations scholarly relevant and punctual but you can only have two I'll let you guys decide which two you get so what I'm trying to say here is that in presentations like this something inevitably will be sacrificed sorry about that but maybe we can pick up some threads in discussions and that sort of thing but off we go so this book is the product of a grant from dialogue Oz evolution and Christian faith program the grant allowed me freedom from some administrative responsibilities as department chair and a reduced teaching load over the last couple of years to focus more on the writing and any professors is so grateful for grants like that the evolution and Christian faith program as it says here is a program designed to support projects and network building among scholars church leaders and parachurch organizations to address theological and philosophical concerns commonly voiced by Christians about evolutionary creation so in that vein I approached this project with a concern about how some are appropriating the church fathers as exemplifying a modern approach to scripture in general and to Genesis one in particular I am a historical theologian from what's called a historical theologian part of which involves the study of theology and doctrines and how they developed through history and what influences those developments this means that my eyes widen and my ears perk up when I see claims like this when I hear theological appeals to theological history supporting this or that view and this is simply an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about sometimes we have Angelica's make appeals to the church fathers but it's often in a way that tries to Protestant eyes or evangelical eyes them to make them early advocates of some aspect of our theology or a particular reading of a biblical passage this is the main issue that I try to address in the book I test the claim that the church fathers held modern creation science views of Genesis one that's really that simple most of what I publish has a target audience of evangelical Christians and as someone who has tried to recommend these important theologians to evangelicals I want them to be understood on their own terms not as ammunition in a debate they knew nothing about but the area in which I research and write is quite frankly not very well known by have angelicus and this can lead them to the above-mentioned evangelical izing of them so why this book well I simply want to offer a window into how the church fathers understood Genesis 1 so tonight I'm going to spend most of my time telling you what the book is about but before I get there I have to tell you what the book is not about so two things I do not argue that the church fathers were or would be evolutionists it's not what I'm trying to get out this argument is just as problematic I think as arguing that the Church Fathers advocated creation science both are problematic not trying to do either further I do not argue that the interpretive methods practiced by the fathers should be adopted wholesale by heaven Jellicle so I want to qualify that a little bit that is definitely a discussion that needs to be ongoing but that's not what I'm doing here we can massage that a bit and play with it which I'm sure we will but that's not what I'm trying to do in the book I believe that the book can be used as part of that conversation and I hope it does if we're going to have the conversation though we need to understand how the Church Fathers use the text how they live the text how they read it how they interpret in it and that's really really key and that's one of the foundational things I tried to do in the book so these points are really important to remember for if we're to learn from our Christian heritage we must approach its representatives again on their own terms we must not force our contemporary labels and classifications on them so it's in this context that CS Lewis offers some fantastic advice so in 1944 Lewis published this really good essay called on the reading of old books and the essay I think is still very very relevant today Lewis writes in that essay of his regret that nowadays we tend to neglect ancient books because they seem irrelevant to our times he says this neglect is no more apparent than in theology the essay is really an apologetic for why we should listen to those who have gone before us in the faith of the several reasons he offers for the reading of old books one stands out as particularly relevant to the study of the church fathers he says every age has its own outlook it is especially good at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make certain mistakes we all therefore need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes period and that means old books Lewis knew that there was nothing magical about the past he's not speaking about a Golden Age people he says were no clever then than they are now they made as many mistakes as we but not the same mistakes and I've italicized that part because that's really what I'm trying to get out here a very significant reason for why we should take the time to understand our Christian heritage is because we make different mistakes and those things can help us understand each other for Lewis those who have gone before us in the faith offer important checks and balances to our modern understanding and our own theories and conclusions we sometimes think that were above context and culture as we study and we read we put them under the microscope and sometimes lose sight of the fact that perhaps we should put we should use them to put ourselves under the microscope recognizing I think that we are not the first to struggle with Scripture in our attempt to live faithfully before God can open up a whole new repository of guidance it can allow us to see ourselves as situated within an ongoing tradition that extends from the past and speaks to us today it can allow us to see ourselves as situated within an ongoing tradition now as I stated earlier this area of early Christian theology and the Church Fathers is not very well known amongst evangelicals this meant that I needed to write a fairly robust chapter really arguing why the church fathers are important so I apologizes this is a little-little the print is small but this is the tale of contents to the book right so right there is my first chapter who are the church fathers and why should I care now I wish I had about four hours and then I could really get into some of these things but the fact is I can't make that apologetic today I don't have time to but let me just say that all of the sources that I consulted on the creation science side of things all gave a nod to the importance of the father's so I took that as a kind of a common ground upon which I could proceed so that that common ground allowed me to to allows me tonight at least to move forward confident that both sides if you will have that agreement the problem however even if there is that common ground is how the fathers are handled that's the big problem and I identify that problem in Chapter two a title which I kind of like how not to read the father's a survey of creation science appropriation of the father's so in that chapter I detail many examples of how the fathers are used by representatives of groups like Answers in Genesis creation Ministries International and the Institute for Creation Research now that the body of literature as you may imagine is not huge okay but it is there rather than a deliberate and patient approach into this strange new world of the fathers they tend to decontextualize and proof text these early Christian leaders and try to show that they interpret Genesis really no different than creation science advocates in this way the church fathers as I said become ammunition in a debate they knew nothing about so the problem I think stems from certain assumptions about how the Bible functions in the church and how how it should be interpreted in other words the fathers are approached as if they have the same understanding of these things as evangelicals so when a father when a church father uses a term like this like literal or plain meaning or historical a straight line is then drawn from the father's right to present-day evangelicals and it's assumed that these terms and concepts mean the same thing to them or meant the same thing to them as they do to us this is contrary I think to the good advice that Louis gives us who insists that we should actually consider these forebears in the faith on their own terms and not force them into our preconceived notions and this is what is happening when the fathers are categorized as you see here in two literal and allegorical or I should say literal or allegorical the problem is that this does not do justice to the historical and Theological realities in which they lived in this division into literalists which mean good interpreters and allegorist which mean bad interpreters the literalist our champion as those who read scripture properly the Allard wrists are bemoaned as the ones who read it improperly and even chastise for reading it in the way they do and in the battle over the proper approach to interpreting Scripture this narrative then presents the literalists as ultimately winning the day and that is essentially the lineage out of which evangelicalism grows it is this foundational narrative that I call into question throughout the book hence the question marks unfortunately the history upon which this narrative rests is not so cut and dried as it suggests so the history of the tension between literal and allegorical is actually an issue that has received much attention by those who study the fathers nowadays we tend to make a sharp distinction between literal and spiritual or allegorical and we assume that this was the way it's always been in Christianity but in the early church the literal sense of Scripture had a complexity which tends to obscure that distinction and the Deaf definition that we give to live literal so let me give you an example so there's this guy named Theophilus of antioch bishop of antioch he is called by scholars of the Church Fathers a literal interpreter of Scripture by his second century but in his interpretation of the first first six days of creation he uses both typology and allegory as he connects the days of creation with the larger Christian narratives when he discusses for example the creation of the luminaries on the fourth day he claims that they contain quote a pattern and type of a great mystery so because the Sun is greater in brightness and power than the moon the Sun is a type of God and the moon a type of man so you tell me is that literal it's not in the sense that we have come to understand literal so something else is going on here that we need to try to understand clearly these are not literal in the sense we mean and this is really only one of many examples I could have put forward and it should actually I think serve as a warning to be really really careful when we want to just draw a straight line from them to us the simple delineation of the Church Fathers into literalist and alig rest's and then equating literalists with good interpret interpretation and allegories with bad simply will not do if we really want to understand the father's so this is why I have devoted the largest chapter in the book chapter 3 to the topic what does literal mean patristic exegesis in context there was no strict delineation in the early church between literalists and allegorist s-- it's not that simple there was a tension in early christianity between a group that's called the Antiochian and a group that's called the Alexandrians but to label the Alexandrians nearly as allegorist s-- and the Antiochian as literalists in the way that we understand it does not do justice and miss places the tension when this is done a false narrative is created that serves to bolster creation science claims with regard to Genesis but the problem is just that it's a false narrative it's not true to the historical and Theological realities here's the false narrative there existed in the early church alexandria --nz and Antioch eats the Alexandrians are represented by perhaps the most controversial Church Father origin of Alexandria and they had no regard for history and resorted to all sorts of wild readings of the text on the other hand were the anti o kings they were really the first practitioners of what we now call the grammatical historical exegesis that has its foundation in a literal historical understanding of the text the difference between the two was that the Antiochian scared about correspondence to historical events while the allegory Alexandrians took no account of history that's the narrative it's false and that false narrative has been propagated in many evangelical treatments of biblical interpretation where the Antiochian czar championed as the forefathers forefathers were forebears of our own approach to Scripture but as many scholars of the Church Fathers have pointed out Alexandria and Antioch represent complementary rather than contradictory or competing viewpoints the two interpretive traditions are not mutually exclusive but are in fact fundamentally metaphorical and symbolic so they're closer to each other then we have been led to believe to us today literal historical is commonplace and expected but study of early Christian biblical interpretation shows that this heavy historical emphasis is somewhat unique to the modern world scholar Francis Young says this of the Antiochian they could not have imagined quote explicitly locating revolution for Revelation not in the text of Scripture but in the historicity of the events behind the text events to which we only have access by reconstructing them from texts treating them as documents providing historical data this is anachronistic and obscures the proper background of the Antiochian protest against allegory the distinction between what the text meant the author's original meaning and what the text means application was really not a concern the tension between the Alexandrians and the antio Keynes was not over a literal historical concern in the way we understand it the difference was in the way that perceived deeper meanings were taken to relate to the surface of the text not the events necessarily both groups look for a deeper sense and neither was concerned with the reference to the events behind the text or to the human authors intended meaning the fact is all early Christian reading of Scripture was in some sense figural spiritual so all of that is presented presented in much more detail in Chapter three and it stands I think as much needed foundation to the second part where I actually get to reading the father's now of course the readings are not exhaustive I had to select certain church fathers and here's the short list of ones I I used in chapters 4 to 7 then the second part of the book where I actually read the fathers I take themes as you see in topics related to the interpretation of Genesis 1 and simply read the father's on them let them speak for themselves I won't make a comment here on the first first chapter in the 4th in the second part Basel the literacy literal is question mark I specifically Basile figures quite prominently in the book because he's often championed as a literalist by those who are trying to appropriate the church fathers from the creation science perspective and to anyone who really studies Basile and knows basil and reads him that the comment basil was a literalist just it's it's almost unbelievable that that claim can be made although he does make certain claims in his writings on the six days of creation that that make you scratch your head so what I'm doing in that chapter is trying to clarify that and understand the comments he makes about allegory in in their context and that's all I'm gonna say about that chapter and the next three chapters are fairly self-explanatory creation out of nothing days of Genesis then August and on in the beginning and you can figure out what I'm gonna what I'm trying to do there so rather than detail a lot of that stuff which is fairly detailed and I'll admit it's it's it's a bit heavy reading I want to direct attention to the final chapter of the book I would almost say that I came close to being inspired to write it I don't know like although that was a joke I could I call the chapter on on being like Moses right and I think it's an appropriate final chapter to a book like this and I called it being like Moses because it exemplifies an approach to scripture that was very very important to the fathers one would be hard-pressed to find in the early earliest interpreters of Genesis an approach that is intent in finding direct one-to-one correspondence with strictly historical events rather what we find is Scripture interpreted in a manner that emphasizes a call to a deeper spiritual life where the salvation of humankind and the ultimate goal of seeing God our overarching so in the final chapter i explain how basil of Caesarea sees Moses as an exemplar in that call in doing this we see how Basil's use of Genesis 1 is not directed toward a scientific description of the way God created but rather toward the call of a deeper spiritual life for many of the church fathers Moses was a progressive symbol or type if you will for the spiritual life of all Christians the appeal here is from the narrative of Moses on Mount Sinai particularly where Moses asks to see God's glory Moses saw God on Mount Sinai which to basil gives him a unique and authoritative status as author of the creation narratives the creation narratives were written by Moses so that the reader are here may have a worthy conception of God with the end goal of salvation of the readers or the hearers so Basel connects the author of the narratives Moses with the purpose of their writing Moses is salvation consisted in seeing God and he argues basil does that the creation narratives are actually an invitation for every Christian to seek the same experience as Moses be like Moses the problem however is that something keeps us from being like Moses so he zeroes in Bazzle does on Genesis 1:26 perhaps one of the more famous verses in all of Genesis then God said let us make humankind according to our image and according to likeness and let them rule the fish of the sea and the birds of the sky and the cattle and all the earth and all the creeping things that creep upon the earth he clarifies that being made according to the image of God means he clarifies what it means by connecting it to ruling the fish of the sea it indicates in other words a ruling principle so being created according to the image of God is connected to a ruling principle and here you see it ruling these beasts these animals the interesting thing however is that basil does not understand them in their plain or literal sense he says he's not talking about literal Birds and literal fish there's a deeper sense where they indicate the passions of the body see the beasts are the passions of the body that need to be tamed they are not literal beasts the passions of the body are the beasts the need to be ruled the image according to which humanity was created gives humanity a power or the power to rule over our bodily passions which are the animals mentioned in Genesis 1:26 the problem is that humanity has actually chosen to renounce that power that was given to us at creation we have chosen to give in to our passions we've given up that rule we have the image by our creation and this is where he starts now to pick up likeness we have the image by our creation but the likeness is built by our free choice and we bring it about by our activity by our own activity in fact this is what basil says putting on Christ means the likeness is connected to Christ and this is actually how basil defines Christianity likeness to God as far as is humanly possible so for basil the creation story is actually an education and human life because quote the rule we have been given over the animals trains us to rule the things belonging to ourselves basil says there is a quote mystery end quote hidden in the words of Genesis there's a deeper sense he's calling us to recognize this original condition in which humanity was created gave humanity the ability to contemplate God to see God this is what basil calls Paradise this is what basil calls Paradise Humanity actually made the choice to leave this paradise and fell quote from the true delight that was in Paradise we invented adulterated delicacies for ourselves we have the beauty of paradise and he means contemplation of God he's not talking about a literal garden contemplation of God we had the beauty of paradise and exchanged it for and this is perhaps my favorite quote from boughs exchanged it for cooks and bakers and various pastries and aromas and such things console us in our banishment from there we console ourselves with materialism mine the contemplation of God was surrendered for very very poor substitutes of this material existence what humanity chooses basil says is actually against nature it's actually against nature contrary to why humanity was created you are born that you might see God says basil not that your life might be dragged down to earth not that you might have the pleasures of beasts but that you might achieve heavenly citizenship what does he mean by heavenly citizenship contemplation of God there's nothing higher for bass basil does not understand the narrative of the creation of humanity as one that details the method that God uses to create using Moses as an example of the height to which humanity can ascend he explains that humanity's own choice has obstructed its ability to be like Moses so there's something much more going on here for basel than a literal description of creation almost done this is only a small sampling of the kind of things we see in the church fathers and their writings and on Genesis it may sound new it may sound strange and maybe even suspect that's okay but I think we should reflect on why it appears strange and perhaps suspect our modern heaven Jellicle approach to general Genesis is primarily historical we read it to discover what happened in the past what matters to us is what actually happened and we value the text because it gives us literary access to past events in this sense then the text is true because it gives accurate reporting of the past but if we are to take CS Lewis and his advice seriously and I think we should actually we do well to recognize that we are also children of our age just as the fathers were children of their age rather than assume a cult cultural triumphalism from our side perhaps we should pause and consider what that means and how our own Christian heritage can serve as a guide as we actually seek our Creator thank you okay of course I'm not a real rabbi but I play one in the classroom social location is important and you should know that my office is directly across from clay galleries and we've been known from time to time to trade volleys across the hall allard shouts out allegory is what rescued the Old Testament for the early church Broyles calmly replies the Church Fathers had to resort to allegory because those Gentiles didn't know how to read semitic texts but now in this symposium i didn't think people would laugh at that but now in this public symposium a happy to confess that i have learned a great deal from Craig's follies he has opened my horizons to a brave new world of Christian interpretation of the Old Testament now being a student of the Hebrew Bible I started reading Craig's book from this end notice discovered this chapter of called on being like Moses and I began to think like this book and then I noticed that he is author index had more page entries for Moses and it did for Paul and I thought this book definitely has potential so I would start by recommending dr. Alex book very highly it will have it for sale in the back and I'll let you start with the last point because Dalek growler suggested that was one of the prime impetuses for his writing the book he does discuss how people use and abuse the Bible on creation evolution debates and he handles that very admirably but before me I found the greatest value and as an introduction to the church fathers in their world he tackles the enduring issues of interpretation what is census moralis is it literal or is it literary issues of typology and allegory he takes one of our principle texts what is its meaning and during significance and the earliest appropriation of this in Old Testament creation account in the church now for much of this I was on a very steep learning curve and I have to be honest some parts were more than my little empirical brain could handle but I learned a great deal from the book like I think the appropriate place to begin the conversation is in the beginning which in Hebrew denotes the first book of the Bible very sheet as context for his discussion of patristic exegesis I thought it would be helpful to see this passage through the eyes of the ancient Hebrews first Genesis 1 is a thoroughly Semitic text not only is it written in the Hebrew language its cultural orientation is ancient Semitic in other words it is a language and worldview foreign to both the Greek and Latin church fathers second when one reads Genesis 1 in its original Hebrew one can see priestly fingerprints all over it it's terminology and phrases echo especially the holiness code in the Book of Leviticus although Christian theology makes much of themes like humanity the images God references to the image of God disappear after Genesis 9 but time and again throughout the Old Testament the importance of Sabbath observance on the seventh day or occurs third scholars have good reasons to locate the composition of Genesis 1 in the Babylonian exile especially because of its echoes of the Babylonian creation myth in umeå Leesh 4th embedded in the axilla section of the Book of Isaiah chapters 40 to 55 there is a critique of some of the theological elements in Genesis chapter 1 here I'd like to offer my thanks to Kyle Parsons for is that main thesis most of what I say here I owe to his work unfortunately he's not here to take a bow but Genesis one serves as a prologue to Leviticus setting the stage for key rituals sabbath observance liturgical festro festivals and kosher food laws in leviticus strange as it might sound to our ears this reading would be the plain meaning of the text for ancient Hebrews it's not about it's not about how God created the world it's about God's creational framework for the ritual laws that set the Israelites apart as God's holy people it's about identity Genesis 1 portrays God anthropomorphic Lee as a king pronouncing decrees let there be and his work in creation is portrayed within a six-day Work Week at the end of each day he pauses and enjoys his achievement declaring it good at the climax of the narrative which is not mad on day 6 but the end of the week long cycle he stops and rests so Leviticus instructs Israel how they can be holy as Yahweh is holy by observing Shabbat in short Genesis 1 provides a theological model for Sabbath observance the primary function of the Sun Moon and stars is not for their benefits in nature such as warmth photosynthesis or navigation but to mark out the Modine translated seasons in Genesis but the same word translated appointed times or festivals in Leviticus 23 which contains the liturgical calendar Sabbath Passover weeks and booths the separation of kind or species in Genesis establishes the creational basis for distinguishing clean and unclean foods for Jewish kosher laws as part of its context Genesis one also mimics ancient near-eastern creation accounts or miss only to subvert them so Genesis one mimics a new male eeesh is a foundational narrative of the cosmic king who masters chaos Tovah Volvo of the earth as willy-nilly and waters with his wind or lava low heating and he orders the heavens the earth and humanity one of the first acts of creation as in both accounts is the separation of waters and a firmament a metal firmament to contain the waters in the sky the heavenly lights again their primary function is to establish the calendar but it mimics this genre only to subvert its theology there are not many gods in conflict there is one creation is not a manifestation of deities it is an it humans are not made from the blood of an evil God they are good they are not lackeys to the gods feeding the gods they are God's image they are made to rule and subdue God's creatures but most significantly and here's the twist the climax is not sacred space that is a temple as in a novela Sh it's sacred time Shabbat so here just so some no I I would take issue with John Walton on several a close reading of both Genesis 1 and Isaiah 4055 also known as second Isaiah reveals literary echoes or by second Isaiah critiques and clarifies Genesis chapter 1 according to Isaiah 4255 darkness was not pre-existent but explicitly created by off way along with light but the Prophet does not go so far to make the same claim for pre-existent matter but simply that God did not leave the earth in its chaotic state but formed it for habitation so we're not yet at creatio ex nihilo the rhetorical questions in second Isaiah clearly indicate that Yahweh has no likeness contrary to Genesis 1 and there is clearly no us in second Isaiah either as Yahweh has no need of divine counsel he works alone finally Yahweh explicitly explicitly has no need of rest so these inner biblical echoes demonstrate that earlier biblical texts are sometimes in need of clarification and critique so however we evangelicals understand divine inspiration we must keep these biblical revisions in mind so now where do the Hebrew interpretations sit on the literal allegorical spectrum well as you gather for the most part they are not literal in nature looking at Genesis says priestly prologue we see figures of speech and to precision God is symbolically portrayed as king and worker I see typology in God's work week as a type of the Israelites work week I don't see typology operative for the lamps they are not a type or symbol of Sabbath and festivals the kinds of creatures are not a type of symbol of clean or unclean foods but it is kind of a staged setting for these sacred rituals now if I may use the etymology of allegorize to illustrate its function Alice and a Gerudo meaning to speak of the other in other words the primary intent of the literary piece is to speak of the other not its surface subject well Genesis 1 is ostensibly about creation its main purpose is to provide the creational pham framework for Sabbath festivals and kosher foods and food laws although not an allegory I think Genesis shares this feature that is primary interest is in something other than its surface subject as an old test as a counter text to ancient near-eastern myth I see operative here what I would call genre subversion where it deliberately imitates the same mythic plot uses the same cause with geography but it recast that plot and recast the characters deity nature and humanity and most significantly it surprises us with this unique climax of sacred time instead of sacred space so here is where I think a strictly literal interpretation of Genesis one would miss the mark first it's reductionist if I could jump down to the final line here it would reduce biblical revelation to a single melody I see operative in the Bible and how God reveals is much more than melodic harmony not the single melody a literal interpretation would miss the intertextual links to jet leviticus and how Genesis one sets the stage for rituals that mark out Israel as God's holy people that important thing of identity it misses the figurative metaphors and to pull off is God's work we so strangely enough theologically I would suggest that literalists ignore the very important theological notion of God's accommodation and condescension in Revelation by their literal approach I would suggest they have a comparatively low theology especially when compared to the father's they would also miss the rhetorical force of Genesis 1 to mimic and subvert pagan theology they would miss read and this is the critical point they would miss read the reference of its cosmic geography as factual scientific claims not mythic echoes so why our Sun Moon and stars made on day 4 well their lamps and lamps need something to be hung on so you have to have the earth and then you have to have the firmament then we're ready to put the lamps in place that makes perfect sense within the Semitic world okay now next topic sort of comparing briefly and contrasting patristic and Jewish sects of Jesus here we have the familiar of fourfold sense of Scripture starting with the literary and then the levels of interpretation above it moral spiritual heavenly and so on this would be Jewish interpretation which uses the acronym pardis so reading scripture brings you to paradise the first level is the passat what we would call census letter Alice the second element is actually the third part of the acronym rosh pointing us to Midrash here we have contemporary meanings of the text third would be remiz where we have allegorical readings and the fourth level would be sold secret or hidden and this is more of the mystical readings of Scripture so bottom line here I think Judaism and Christianity share in the belief and exegetical practice that the Bible sometimes means more than it says multiculturalism is good and here I use the example of creative xD hello Genesis one does not teach creado XD hello it has a Semitic beginning and Semitic stories always begin with darkness and lorry chaos so to mimic that genre that's where Genesis begins you have the summary statement in verse 1 and the pre-existent entities of Earth darkness deep waters there in verse 2 but now once Jews are born and bred within a Hellenistic culture they ask the question that's obvious to us not even on the radar screen is submit a culture so who made the so-called pre-existent matter so these Hellenized Jews asked the abstract questions related to be and existence and answered God did second Maccabees John one Hebrews chapter 11 Craig Allard's chapter on agustin was actually my my favorite I found him sometimes brilliant sometimes tedious but the chapter starts off with the interesting quotation from Agustin what was God doing before he made heaven and earth okay now that question would not occur to me in a million years and if I can be blunt I think if the original writers of Genesis chapter 1 were in the room with Agustin they would say Agustin what the Gehenna are you talking about but here I think Agustin raises very good questions of time and eternity and like I say these are excellent questions that didn't occur to me wouldn't have current stage and Semites so it suggests here going beyond Agustin that a very important gift from the Gentile world and greco-roman culture and thought is systematic theology that we move here from the narrative and poetic theology of the Bible to systematic theology of the church where we think much more conceptually synthetically and these are good questions and categories for thought so here I was just there a variety of cultural and social perspectives and interpretations is good the church is historical historic it's international it's a multicultural body so Hellenism brings us to create ile XD hello liberation theology from latin america helps Westerners see that the exodus wasn't really about spiritual liberation from sin it was socio-economic liberation feminism exposes us exposes the patriarchy in the Bible LGBT raises helpful questions about gender and identity and on we can go forth what is a Christian reading of the Old Testament here we're gonna have some interesting discussion a Christocentric reading advocates that the diverse witnesses and themes of the Old Testament should be brought into harmony with Christ as the unifying Center I would advocate more for a Christo Tillich approach where Christ is the goal or climax of God's unfolding revelation so in this sense each discrete witness and theme has value in its own right but of course once we see the climax we review earlier segments in light of this goal this is what we do every time we see read a book or a murder mystery so here are some of my theological inferences that I would get from Genesis 1 which I find very profound God works profoundly in chaos and brings it to order hey my life is in chaos and that gives me confidence that God is going to work in my world I get we get a clearer picture of the Gods governance he is King he gives decrees he's priest he gives blessing I also get some insight here into the so called problem of evil the world is good but it is not perfect there is no claim of that chaos in point of fact still needs to be ruled and subdued I also see value in the world is good contrary is some more spiritual notions you might get from the New Testament where we talked about the world the flesh and the devil no the world is a good place it's God's gift is a sacrament humans are responsible for creations thriving hey that sound relevant to climate change the dignity of humanity and the power of humanity being made in God's image the pattern of work reflection and rest but then I ask myself does this theology need to be connected to the second member of the Trinity ie Christology to be Christian I would answer no unless histology is your particular subject of interest as John chapter one which I see orab traveling most commentators would see is a blend of the word and Genesis one was wisdom and proverbs 8 you have the logos in John chapter 1 now as I've suggested the church has been shot primarily Gentile not Jewish not Semitic they've given us theology we tend to speak in terms of doctrines we're interested in synthesis evangelicals we love harmonization we have Sunday School lessons and it's on this particular topic but I like to remind us that the Great Commission calls us to be and enlists us as disciples of Rabbi Jesus and at the end of Matthew's Gospel so how did rabbi Jesus interpret the law on the prophets well let's look at the Sermon on the Mount you've heard it said but I say to you so what I would like to advocate here is that for the church to better understand the Semitic Old Testament the Gentile church should adopt Jewish dialectic and in this perspective diversity and discrepancies are not problems to be solved and harmonized but they're essential to talking about Torah as an extension of loving God as Deuteronomy and joins us there's this famous line from the Talmud for three years the house of Shama and the house of Hillel debated these said the law is in accord with our position and those said the law is an accord with our position but then an echo came forth and said these and those are the words of the Living God okay now here I this is what I see to be the essence of the problem here what happens when the conversation partners dies okay each generation interprets genna's Genesis one in light of its contemporary conversation partners so as I suggested Genesis 1:1 is written in conversation with ancient Near Eastern religion so the language they use is Mis now the Greek philosophers and here I this was a game-changer for me in Craig Allard's book where I learned that both Greek philosophers and the Church Fathers employed allegory to maintain the relevance of earlier canonical literature for the Greeks their home lyric myths and for the fathers the Old Testament okay so I fully thought that allegory was simply an exegetical games his father's played I was blind but now I see okay now we come to the church fathers okay and they by the time of the church fathers Babylonian civilization is a bit long buried and their myths are not part of the father's memory okay so please notice Tomatina I use that word memory and so ancient a recent is long dead and buried and their conversation is Greek philosophers so they interpret Genesis one allegorically now there is another group called Christian modernist and they're reading Genesis chapter 1 and professor allert uses the analogy of amnesia which I found quite helpful and I thought and he uses talks about Jason Bourne so again amnesia Oh Jason Bourne I got it okay so the Christian modernists has amnesia and they're sleeping through the dark ages okay but their REM cycle happens to match up with the Enlightenment and the Christian modernist wakes up and you can't get these Enlightenment dreams out of his head he's not sure where they came from but they're part of his psyche and this morning Bible reading is in the beginning of history God made the world in six days now especially in America where I'm not going to tolerate some elite Authority telling me the individual what I should believe my Jesus my Bible give me the plain sense of Genesis 1 directly thank you very much and so now I'm in conversation with liberal Christians secular modernists and I used the language of historicist but now I would suggest that we have certain gifts of Providence pardon if I sound a little Calvinist reform that's not a bad thing from time to time that Providence has provided the Christian Academy and by that I mean us Trinity Western University acts seminary and so on and in the mid 18th century around 1850 archaeologists unearthed Acrobat Paul's library including a new male eesh parallels Genesis one give a mesh parallels the flood story so only now since the mid 19th century do we have any understanding of what the conversation partner of Genesis chapter 1 was now we know we've also experienced modernism and modernism has given us objective historical a contextual interpretation I know objectivity has gotten a lot of hits lately but it has helped recover the ancient modes of communication lo and behold between me and the text is a huge historical linguistic and cultural gulf and that's what it helps to bridge but we also have post-modernism an awareness of the subjective interpreters suspicions of power and meta-narratives and wool the assured results of storable criticism aren't so assured so now my final question is what and how should we having these gifts educate University and Seminary students and churches without being leadest lead our 21st century conversation partners may God give us wisdom so thank you Craig and I mean this sincerely your book has helped us all Testament mercy that I need to become a disciple not only abroad by Jesus but also the church fathers so I now look forward to your next volume on Genesis to the historical theologian we've heard from the biblical scholar now forward from the queen of the sciences I'm just kidding of course instead of reading you this diatribe that I have done I've written more in the form of a formal book review and I will publish it what I think I will do is just simply make some general comments just because I want to bring you in to the conversation I think it's more important that we have that time so I'm gonna try and keep myself as short as possible time wise to give you the opportunity to respond let me begin by saying that Craig has done an excellent job of distilling down for us some very complex material as well as a massive amount of research on his part into a very readable and not too long oh so I want to commend you for that achievement also the fundamental thesis of the book I absolutely agree with I think it's absolutely impossible to expropriate what the fathers meant by literal interpretation from a modernist perspective and expect that you know they the material that they themselves of others produced will support that in the long run as a matter of fact I think it's fundamentally flawed for the reasons that have already been suggested here tonight and think I need to say anything more about that I just want to reflect on a few of your conclusions before I offer just a few quibbles because you see I'm a big fan of this book I happen to agree with you on so many fronts that it was very difficult to criticize it although you know I'm trying my best just so you know to begin with I'd like to say thank you for pointing out that evangelicals are beginning to rediscover the father's despite the fact that they are doing until sometimes in the haphazard ways perhaps even ways that are you know egregious as you say egregious uses of the father's and I agree with that it is of course a problem in the evangelical tradition to read the father's because many of us have not been practiced in the process and so we find ourselves dealing with material that were not always familiar with so you're absolutely right to point out that very often we read them out of context we read them without regard for what our own Bible says about interpretation itself as Craig just made very clear from the Old Testament context stunning interpretation is not just a variated level of understanding within paul for instance but also within the hebrew tradition itself i think very often evangelicals function with an understanding of literal interpretation completely ignorant of the fact that the Bible itself proposes multiple forms of hermeneutical principles when it comes to biblical interpretation so that's one thing I want to say you were absolutely right to take MOOC and Level II to task I having now become familiar with them through your work I went and took a look at what they were doing and realized you were absolutely dead on the mark they certainly do take quite a few liberties with the fathers and have misunderstood them I particularly appreciated chapters 3 & 4 of the book I think the crux of the book is between those two chapters I think more chapter 4 because Basel really does illustrate well your point about literal interpretation and the plurality of hermeneutics in the church fathers that have to be brought to bear on any attempt to appropriate Basil's literal interpretation of Genesis I think you did a very fine job of establishing the fact that he did not mean by literal interpretation a static principle of a biblical interpretation that would be the thing that he would champion but that in other of his works he moved around various forms of interpretation included typological exegesis and allegorical eyes of Jesus I really appreciated also the conclusion you came to with regard to the false and very misleading dichotomy between Alexandria and allegorical interpretation and Antiochus literal interpretation which again has served in the evangelical community as a bit of a device to kind of divide up what they considered to be appropriate you know theology from the father is an inappropriate theology from the father's having spent much of my time in the Alexandrian fathers particularly at the doctoral level in my minor and also at my in my THM I fully agree that what dazzle is actually doing is appropriating a pedagogical approach to interpretation that allows for the possibility of novices to read the text and gain a literal meaning and that in the heck's a Mehran he has to guard them on that side to make sure that he's not causing them problems by raising them to a level of understanding within the text that they can they cannot yet aspire to but will one day origin was too often I think castigated for not spending enough time on the literal text the literal interpretation of the text when in fact for him it was always disturbing and despite the fact that he often went beyond that history was sometimes eclipsed did this work nevertheless it was his pastoral concern for Souls leading them from the position of being novices in the reading the scripture to be an experts in the reading the scripture so that their soul may be redeemed in the reflective process I think was precisely what basil was doing okay Murat and you were right on to point that out and it was one of the features of the book that I really very much appreciated and I think your your thesis is very much amplified and and filled out in the chapters on Creon tio XD hello the days of creation and Augustine's beautiful treatment of in the beginning which of course I won't say much about because Craig is already reflected on them but in all three chapters what I came away from with having read them was that indeed your your thesis that you cannot impose a modern understanding of literal exegesis on the fathers because they understood literal meaning the scripture categorically different qualitatively different than modern rationalist might understand it with evangelical tradition was nevertheless in these chapters brought to fruition and so the final chapter appreciate it very much and so maybe what I'll do is just comment briefly on that final chapter because it was agreed encouragement to me I I say the icing on the cake of resistance to a kind of literal interpretation that some evangelical creationists want from the fathers is to be found in one of the church's greatest theologians Augustine Augustine makes it clear that the treatment of Genesis 1:1 and the relation to the days of creation that any literal interpretation is quite impossible because it is theologically suspect childish even such an approach would fail to understand both the analogical process by which humans come to know their world and it would effectively destroy the Eternity of God since the idea of literal rest as applied to God's being would reduce him to some materialistic aspect of creation motion space-time or matter that is true of his treatment of the theme in Augustine's city of God and in his day jealousy at literal in both works he stands in the interpretive tradition that does not allow literal interpretation to function as a closure on the meaning of a given text the utterance of creation is an utterance of the eternal into time and not merely a vocal or literary sign it B speaks eternity and cannot therefore be limited to literalistic interpretation or by the matter that his speech gives rise to in short as alert reiterates in his exhortation to follow basil and be more like Moses we should find in the creation accounts not an attempt to reconstruct the physical scientific and/or historical process of the origins of the universe which Bazelon Augustine at least have no interest in rather we should seek the deep secret theologia of the text for there we shall find and return to paradise so this has been of a rah rah sis boom bah you know great book but if you have a few quibbles quibbles and these are questions that i think i read as you were as the book was unfolding i think i was knowing what I know of you I was reading a bit of your own mind and your own frustration with having had to do theology of the evangelical tradition which by the way is another common ground that you're not sharing so generally concur with you in your negative description of some of the evangelical misappropriation of the father's especially by groups you have identified the parameters you lay out in the attempt to correct the abuses of proof texting that's procreating and the failure of hermeneutical acuity danger in my opinion at points I felt this doll only the experts were really permitted to mine the father's as a resource for theology of creation today so do you think that yours and or other discouragements of miss reading of the father's could turn out to become a second abandonment abandonment of the father's by evangelicals who might feel that they lack the expertise to understand them in short can lay people read the father's freely and gain insight from them or should they be limited to what the experts allows them to appropriate that's the question I have because if we want the people to appropriate the father's we have to allow for some hermeneutical laxity in order to promote I think the reading of the father's at times I also felt that the only people in the history of Christianity who read the father as a mess were those narrow-minded evangelicals if only we could be like the Catholics and understand them properly within the tradition in short have you missed the fact that many Protestants and Catholics of the past are equally guilty of mistreating the father's I wonder finally I have a question concerning literal interpretation what should the church is relative function be visa vie hermeneutical pluralism if literal is not really literal in the modern sense how do we place proper controls on the interpretation of Scripture such that doctrine especially the doctrine of creation and still have regular to force in and for the church and that for me is the pastoral theological concern that I came I wonder too if you could actually reverse the title and make it patristic exegesis and literal interpretation rooted Christian readings of Genesis one justified because because the theme of the theme of hermeneutics was so prominent throughout it that you know it could easily have work the anyway thank you very much okay I'll try to make this brief so we can have some questions from the floor thanks to both of you I I appreciate I'm not I'm not brave enough to take their responses just cold so I had them send a rough draft of it so I can prepare this thing so I appreciate Broyles title a conversation with because many many don't recognize or realize that academics generally don't write something and publish it thinking it's the final say on anything we actually put it out there as a conversation and what you do is you invite interaction and you invite critique in order to to help help help yourself first of all but but help further the study we stand on the shoulders of others so I greatly appreciate that so let me just pick up on something that that Craig said in his comparisons between Jewish and patristic exegesis in a statement that the Bible means more than it says this is something that I tried to show throughout the book at least with Paul and the father's his broils definition of allegory to speak of the other I can work with that but I want to I want to broaden that a little bit and offer a fuller definition based on you spaced on how the father is actually practiced it so let me offer this a way of reading a text by assuming that its literal sense conceals a hidden meaning to be deciphered by using a hermeneutical key so rather than allegory being arbitrary or made-up and I'm not saying Broyles said this but this is the accusation against allegory often that it's made up it's arbitrary that that is wrong that's flat-out wrong it is this hermeneutical key that is well key I wish I had more time for a fuller presentation of course but there really and I detail this in the book there are three main passages from Paul that provided for the fathers what I think is a biblical foundation for a deeper reading of Scripture those passages are listed there and when I think the passages show is that Paul had no problem together with other Jews of the time and later Christian fathers of recasting Old Testament passages without regard for the author's intended meaning in one sense I think we can say that the church fathers were convinced that the true meaning of Scripture was found in history but we can only make that claim if we realize that history for them began and was centered in Christ so in what I'm saying is that Christ was that hermeneutical t he was determinative the Incarnation was the supreme historical event that gave meaning to all of history past and present Jesus and His incarnation are not merely an idea or event to which scripture points and I saw that a little bit in Craig's distinction being Christocentric and Kris totally right I think it's more than that so Jesus is intense in his incarnation are not merely an idea or event to its scripture points it is the key to the meaning of history itself it's that significant this means that finding Christ in the Old Testament was actually considered an historical reading the unfolding of God's historical action narrated in the Old Testament takes on meaning that would have been inaccessible to the original human writers thus the story of God's history of Israel does not stand on its own it is illuminated by Jesus Christ who is the key to history Paul was not taught was not tied to the author's original meaning he allowed later revelation to inform his understanding of the Old Testament the fathers believed that they were merely following Paul's biblical model of interpretation Archy you and your quibbles so I think I'm going to address three of your equipped with two of your Global's because I think the third one I touched on here okay fair enough so there's your first quibble I'm not going to read it out takes too long but I'm going to recount a true story true story my wife sitting right there and she'll show vouch for the veracity of this story okay don't worry I won't embarrass you so what's this this is our dishwasher we're ready to throw it out the window we have been having difficulty with our dishwasher sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't now I'm not a trained in dishwasher repair I simply don't have the time to study dishwasher troubleshooting so I did what any normal Canadian academic husband would do I called the dishwasher repairman was he the only person permitted to work on dishwashers no did recognizing my own shortcomings and lack of time caused me to abandon dishwashers no the reason I called the dishwasher repairman is the same kind of reason I call a lawyer or a medical doctor or even a funeral director because they have the expertise in areas that I do not and I've worked hard to gain that expertise this is actually the way life works isn't it certain people are experts in areas where others are not and I don't think we should apologize for that now let me turn the tables a minute and consider the repairman I did some research and found one who had credentials and experience when I called him on the phone he was able to diagnose the problem without actually coming to my house so saved me a lot of money well until he told me to buy a new one but that's that's not the point it became immediately apparent in our conversation that this man had intimate knowledge of dishwashers and I knew I was in good hands of course his credentials were not the same as a lawyer or a doctor or a funeral director but he had them and he gave me solid advice in fact his reputation depended on giving me solid advice one could say that he had a responsibility to offer solid advice just as the reputation of a lawyer a doctor a funeral director depends on solid advice diagnosis and decisions it is not my intent to exclude anyone from studying the father's if you've taken a class from me you know that the fact is my profession though offers me the time and the privilege of doing that and the responsibility of doing this and as one who has training and expertise in reading them I would actually be remiss if I did not share with my brothers and sisters in Christ how I believe they can help us in our Christian walk today similarly I would be remiss if I did not point out those who I believe were reading them incorrectly in the meantime I must responsibly appropriate and invite others to join me your second quibble not gonna read out one way too long I know you're quibbling here hey get it I'm not quite sure how I missed the fact that many are equally guilty of Miss reading the father's my book had a stated purpose which was aimed at a particular reading of Genesis 1 and that's why my focus was on a particular group my net was never cast as wide as the question that seems to suggest we have angelical x' do have our issues but every Christian tradition is susceptible to mistakes and this is precisely I think where Luis comes in we actually need one another because we are all we are not all susceptible to the same mistakes you're related question is a relevant one however you do have a relevant list and I must resign myself to a short answer here I spent many years trying to convince have angelica's that the fathers are part of our Protestant heritage Luther and Calvin recognized this so it's there at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation no scholar the Church Fathers would claim that to appropriate them means owning the entire Roman Catholic tradition in fact many Catholics is the father's to critique their own Roman Catholic tradition on Reidel ubach and the nouvelle theologians Wilkin daily further many of the experts in the field of patristic s-- are actually from the eastern orthodox tradition john bear and earl of john MacGuffin for offski even protestants have their share of respected scholars of the Church Fathers Francis Young who I quoted tonight Radner and yes some of them are even evangelicals like Hall Williams and lifteth neither though none of those from the Orthodox or Protestant tradition has seen the need to abandon their tradition in favor of Roman Catholicism rather they are pointing they are going back to the fathers in order to move forward thank you could you talk about the cultural anxieties inform the conscious or unconscious miss reading evangelical Christian sites cultural anxieties so maybe didn't hear can I explain the cultural anxieties that that are behind the miss readings yeah I think it it goes back to some of the things I was trying to say with regard to the the the failure of angelical ISM to come to terms with the change from modernity to postmodernity that we tend to be locked into a modern mindset when the the spotlight has been cast back on modernity and with the chickens have come home to roost and we've seen that the notion of objective truth and reading any text from an objective stance was a bit well it was wrongheaded and when when you anchor your entire being as a Christian in that kind of thing you got to hang on with dear life and otherwise it's all gone and I think the fear to to step out and step out and then trust God yeah they're wondering just if we imagine what it what if your study had produced a result in the opposite direction what have you had discovered that yes actually those who we say are miss reading and fathers what if it were the case that they actually had an epistle II been using a mod a modern hermeneutic all the way through would that mean that we are would be somehow more responsible to I I wouldn't want to say ignore science but would we handle the problem differently now should should we in such a case in that in that parallel universe yeah so let me let me just clarify if it if if I found that the fathers were actually literal in the way we understand a literal okay well I mean that's a tricky question and I think you're trying to trap me mark well well no because I don't think I don't think we can we can say that the the fathers are prescriptive for 21st century science right and and I'm not arguing in the book nor do I necessarily argue elsewhere that we should adopt patristic interpretation wholesale I think we need to judiciously understand it first and then have a conversation have a dialogue of you know these are the the first interpreters of Scripture right so maybe we ought to actually listen to them and understand that we are just as culturally conditioned as they were so appropriation is always should always be judicious appropriation does that answer your question so Myron Penner moved down sons I'm thinking he wants the questions yeah so I don't know man I figured when I heard yours you're part of Bazell Elmo the first thought to kind of came to my mind we're like well you know Moses writing Genesis seems pretty important to him but why should we think lots of scholarship suggests that you know Moses didn't write Genesis and that you know Royals talk puts the composition of the Old Testament in that blowing neck style so that was kind of what do I do with that and then when it comes to the interpretation of that both verses you know really focusing on the contemplation of God I hear a lot of like Neoplatonic denigration of the physical world my body kind of you know focus on the mystical right so help me find redeem that for me yeah well first of all I would recommend the fantastic book by a colleague on Basil's brother Gregory of Nyssa by a man named Hans Bosma I was just sitting over there who had really helped you that question but I would also point to how did basil live all right basil didn't yeah basil was an ascetic but he brought the ascetic lifestyle the monastic lifestyle to the cities he found at schools he founded orphanages and he he said that this this existence here means something it wasn't an escapist mentality right so I mean quite simply I would point to that and there's other things too but I mean you're right to see a platonism neoplatonism there I mean that's a huge influence on the fathers but that doesn't always mean a straight line to denigration of anything material I wonder like if we're reading Genesis 1 as more like metaphor or I was like Jewish law how far do we carry that into Genesis lengthy we read had them and even that way or like the Noah story in that way yeah so a couple things so I think in some Minds you raise the threat of the slippery slope right if Genesis 1 falls off this then what about Abraham what about Noah Abraham and then we get to Jesus and in young earth creationist you get that that if you can't really believe in historical Adam that brings Jesus Christ into question so I can appreciate that but I would say that I think I mean this is no surprise I think the farther we go back in history the fuzzier the lines get and I think their local literature kind of betrays adds that not sure in the beginning Genesis 1 is tied to historical narratives that goes through David and kings and so on but still I think there are gradations I mean it's interesting if you look at 1st and 2nd kings well let's start with like the Exodus right a very important historical event well when did it happen well who was the Pharaoh well it doesn't tell us right but you move later on in Kings and it actually names the Kings Pharaoh Shishak Pharaoh Neko Pharaoh Tanaka why does King's name Pharaoh's whereas exodus doesn't well Kings have bureaucracies they have scribes they have written text so you kind of cope so the further you go back the fuzzy fuzzier things become now that doesn't mean that they aren't historical but what I find in biblical history writing is that they retell stories and like I say they kind of recast the characters so Deuteronomy he tells The Book of the Covenant and Exodus in numbers and Samuel Kings retails a very different ways chronicles so what I'm saying is that there's more going on in these narratives than just history there is a historical basis certainly so that shouldn't threat to threaten the historicity of our face I wanted a saying on the way that I have a key a penny but if I apologize this is something that you've gone over in your book there's the door Joe I think but you think that an allegorical interpretation of Scripture is entirely separate from a death-row reading or could be incorporating more allegorical method of interpretation while also knowing that they may actually have this very happy no I don't think they're mutually exclusive in fact a lot of allegories is built on on the assumption that events happened right but but the Keith and and and you know most of the fathers believed all these things happen right I mean but the issue is what is what is scripture for how does it function you've heard me say that before haven't you how the scripture function right does it function as this book to tell us about these mundane events well maybe God gave a scientist to do that right maybe there's something deeper that that scripture calls us to try and to try and see and understand and I think that's where spiritual readings of the text encourage us to go so makes sense Spencer I think that's a great question Holly I think the problem is we've often put theological questions on the horns of hermeneutical dilemmas that actually never existed for the fathers yes as Craig pointed out very clearly there were differences regional and sometimes these differences were cultural linguistic more than just ethnic right but I think we have to reteach a an attitude towards biblical interpretation that allows for the function of the church's tradition the scripture itself and the possibility that God may do something new in the way in which scripture is interpreted for the future under the imprimatur of the broad spectrum of Christianity so I think that that's you know that the book that made the difference for me in this was not the book but the four of all volumes or by the luboc on biblical interpretation the next to Jesus in the medieval period because it was the regulative function of the church in its doctrine in its reading of Scripture that helped formulate doctrine and help to actually express the Christian message and I think it would it behooves us to get back to a greater appreciation for the possibility that hermeneutical plurality not only because it was part of Scripture but because it was part of the church's tradition has a place and it's just a question of finding that place and that's why I think it causes a lot of problems because people and one method against the other Craig yeah just they pick up the discussion on allegory you're suggesting an allegory the literal contains a hidden meaning okay so I'm still having problems with this and part of it is well to put it simply God revealed himself in words not in codes so I have issue did God mean something different from what he said is is the as the literal sense of lawlessness the text somehow deficient that we need something else so that that's one point the other point I have is sometimes when it comes to allegory I think right theology but wrong text so I hear basil and so on talking about our struggle with the flesh and so on I get that but I get that from reading Romans and I'm not sure that I would would basil tell me more from his allegorical interpretation of Genesis one that I wouldn't get from a plane or text so like a lot of times when I hear a sermon I think yeah okay good point but from wrong text yeah I don't think allegory says what you said it says what did you say he said allegory is in essence says that what's written is not enough yeah okay that's not what allegory says first of all if you consider all patristic interpretation after origin uses origin right so there's the fourfold sense right and what origin and you know many of the fathers following him would say that there there is the literal sense and that literal sense is for everybody it's it's the sense that everybody can understand and for most people that's probably enough right but there there are calls to deeper readings probably for theologians he or she yeah no but there's cause there's calls for deeper readings that the the text is there to be mined for so allegory does not say the text is is is useless as it stands it builds on on a foundation and it is based in a actually an understanding of inspiration it's a very high understanding of inspiration Origen would say that the text is so inspired by God that it has meanings that that you you need to to work to find with the heretical key I think I think it's helpful that you're asking the question because I think it's a it's a misperception about what allegorical interpretation was in the father's origin didn't just have a four fold method of interpretation what he had was an audience for which he had a pastoral concern and for him every single soul went through a process of redemption through knowledge that required that they begin in the literal sense but that by means of the agency of the log-house and the Holy Spirit they would be encouraged to move on through to higher meetings origin that the literal meaning psychic meaning and the allegorical meaning and later on there was a fourth God to Cole level that drawn out of origin but the fact of the matter is the literal is never is never transcended it's never not carried forward in every other form of interpretation it's where novices begin allegorical interpretation is where those novices reach the height of contemplation that constitutes the paradise of God and so yet are there historical examples where the history contained in the literal sign on the page disappears absolutely but the fact of the matter is generally speaking allegorical interpretation never jettisons literal meaning because it it's the initial place there would be no allegorical interpretation without the literal and so there's there's that to be said for it as well so I think we need to change the way we talk about allegorical interpretation so you teach you to actually train pastors so do you think an essential part of that as part of their preaching is they should be taught to do allegorical interpretation of their sir you would ask me that question wouldn't you know that even in the text of Scripture you cannot restrict hermeneutics to a set of principles that really at the end of the day then constitute rational principles for the interpretation of Scripture language functions by virtue of the fact that God accommodates himself to it in his revelation which means therefore there's a certain hiddenness in the text that we do have to seek out so pastoral training and and the principles of exegesis that we give to students through our hermeneutics needs to be broad enough to allow them the possibility of seeing deeper meaning in the text and now so I wouldn't say that we need to train pastors in the full-blown method you know of for full method of interpretation but we need to make them aware of it we need to make them aware of the possibility that it could become a pastoral tool at some point along the way so you know I think it's impossible to prescribe a single hermeneutic because the Scriptures don't do it the history of the Christian tradition demonstrates that that has never been the case it's a modern convention to think that somehow interpretation has to follow a set of rules that encapsulate the possibility of accessing objective truth that is referring again to my dear brother here hounds Boersma something he said in sacrament a past repossessed we do not hold the truth by means of our interpretive methods rather in our interpretation of Scripture we are held by the truth and that makes a fundamental difference I think let me thank you again for being here and being so attentive I let me thank the respondents doctors Broyles and Spencer and especially dr. Otto [Music]

Channel: Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation

Views: 740

Rating: 4.7777777 out of 5

Keywords: CSCA, Science and Religion, Science, Bible, Christianity, Biologos, Allert, Trinity Western University, Archie Spencer, Craig Broyles, Basil, Church Fathers, Young-Earth Creationism, Answers in Genesis, Evolution, Augustine, Origen, Clement, Creationist

Id: _z8W53HVLCY

Length: 108min 32sec (6512 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 07 2018