Interpreting Genesis 1–3

[Music] welcome to Christ the center your weekly conversation of reformed theology we're now on episode number 582 my name is Camden Busey I serve as the pastor of hope Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Grayslake Illinois and we're back again for another Friday episode of Christ the center looking forward to discussing reformed theology and how this pertains to the church and trying to inform one another and open the floor for a wonderful conversation about some important topics we're gonna be talking about some really important things today the things that I'm sure every single one of our listeners have considered and have discussed and perhaps even taking part of in terms of some debates on the floor of presbytery who knows but let me introduce to you first we have with us our regulars I'll introduce first we have Glendon Clary pastor of Providence OPC in Pflugerville Texas just outside of Austin hey Glen how are you doing I'm doing well thanks came back it's a joy to have you with us today Glen and I hope you're doing well as you say you are and and we're looking forward to having you speak about some of these important matters as well along with your partner at least in in geographical ministry here we have Jim Cassidy who's a little few miles away in South Austin OPC serving as pastor there hi Jim how are you doing I'm doing great on this beautiful Friday afternoon yeah he jokes a little these episodes come out on Fridays it's a Wednesday as we record but this is a holy time travel I suppose since the way things work in in in this regard but today we're very pleased to welcome again back to the program and we have dr. Verne Poitras dr. portrait of course is a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary distinguished professor of New Testament and biblical interpretation there at Westminster welcome back dr. portraits it's always great to speak with you yeah thank you thank you for inviting me previous times with reformed forum yeah it's been it's been many we're delighted to have another book before us today we're going to be speaking about the new book published by cross way which is entitled interpreting Eden a guide to faithfully reading and understanding Genesis 1 through three which is why I mean that the many of our listeners here I'm sure all of them have have considered these matters but of course these are matters that affect the church greatly especially in the in the licensing and the ordination of ministers to the gospel these issues come up and people are always asked questions about their understanding of Genesis 1 through 3 and the nature of creation so we're gonna be speaking about that very thing today but dr. portress even before we started recording I just mentioned that that we just welcomed our third Doctor Poitras to the program and we've had of course you on many many times discussing all of your books we've had your lovely wife on discussing the work and in the theology of Johanna cycle and partyís but also now your son Ransome to discuss his recent book on richard dawkins so we're very thankful to have you back here and continuing on this great family legacy with us today well it's interesting that all three of us have degrees from Westminster seminary I met my wife when she was in the doctoral program I'm working on beckylyn body ascend and ransom has a degree in in biblical counseling but his expertise is is even more in biology and yes that's what he teaches right opened a Houghton College so he is a biologist he's done wonderful research in the field of biology is a true scientist but also has some theological degrees and then your other son younger son Justin as well has gone to attended Westminster correct that's right yes he's different Westminster and he's a youth pastor in Indianapolis PCA praise the Lord well God's grace has been upon your house and we're thankful for your for your commitment to the Lord and for your faithfulness and in raising up your children along with your wife but praise God for their faithfulness and for his blessing upon them it's been a it's privileged we are recipients of God's grace working in and through you so thank you for for this and thank you to your entire family for your work today we're we've got a lot to speak about of course dr. portrait says and even another book out with PNR we're gonna get to in a future episode on knowing and the Trinity talking about the doctrine of God and and epistemology and and many other subjects therein so I want to whet the appetite of our listeners that books a little bit was published a a while ago before this book but the way things worked out and our schedule and whatnot today we're speaking about interpreting Eden dr. portress I imagine many of our listeners are familiar with the Westminster Theological Journal you were the editor of that for many years and certainly have seen some of your recent articles but I was wondering if you could speak to us a bit about the about the I was gonna say the genesis of this book but that's gonna sound like a bad intentional pun I didn't mean that you could speak about how this book came about because many of the chapters therein have been published in the journal but now they've been retooled just a little bit and and brought together with some additional material yeah it's a good question in 2006 a book of mine came out redeeming science and that was about Christian worldview but it used the issues of Genesis and creation and issues of Darwinian evolution as sample cases of but the point was how do you reason about science from a Christian framework because a lot of a kind of atheistic background and framework as has made a lot of inroads in science so that people think of scientific claims often as supporting atheism but it's actually materialist philosophy that's being read into the scientific work and then read back out so that's that was addressed already in 2006 and uh I presented ten different approaches to Genesis one in the days of creation because I thought we need to recognize that the genuine Christian believers who who respect the divine authority the Bible have differed over really a long period of time and so this latest work is not meant to call in question that aspect but since that time I've continued to watch people both from Old Testament and from systematic theology and from scientists as well tackling things in Genesis and not doing very well in my opinion Reina mm-hmm and a hard at the heart of it I think is hermeneutical issues if you get your hermeneutics wrong if for instance I mean to take a more extreme case if you think that the first chapters of Genesis are edifying fiction or that they're overlaid with some kind of mythological thing from ancient Near East then that's going to wreck everything so some of those issues have to be addressed one of the issues obviously is is the Bible actually the Word of God now to most of our listeners that that's an easy answer but it's an answer that has to be there if you're going to interpret Genesis well yeah so it's that kind of thing that I decided you know there's more to be said to help people understand critically some of the things that are coming out that are not reasonable Oren edicts and they're they're slanted in one way or another it's understandable in one sense because there's so much pressure from the culture right there's there's that there's scientists who think of themselves as Christians operating particularly in biology and some of them never question is where the overall paradigm the overall framework which is of purely imminent random processes with no no work special work of God they never questioned that then they're going to come to the Bible trying to make the Bible fit into a framework which I is not a natural framework for it yeah I agree entirely that that's that's a tremendous issue that there's so much of a materialist philosophy and there are others too but this randomness coupled with this materialism ends up driving so much of this discussion and the scoff at people who might present another worldview especially the Christian worldview yet at the same time have never even considered critically the foundation that they purport to stand upon and it's and it's relative not relative but it's just object failure an ability to account for the world as it is yeah I think I know reformed form has talked a lot about the implications of anthill and presuppositional apologetics well it really has implications here because there are a lot of scientists particularly more so than philosophers of science who are really naive because they've been trained and I had training myself I know what it's like I they've been trained in the the nitty-gritty of scientific investigation without asking why is this work and what do we have to assume about the world about scientific law and so on we've spoken about this a bit with your previous training of course you may be maybe people don't know but you you were a PhD completed a PhD in mathematics prior to engaging in your and your theological and Biblical Studies but did you find even in your studies there that Harvard of course at Harvard of all places but the doctor portress did you ever find that even when you were studying that there no one ever asked the deeper questions about what is a number and and how do numbers work so they're studying the deep the deepest problems that we can we can find in mathematics but no one has bothered even to ask what a number is mm-hmm yeah there were people who taught in the philosophy department people like Hilary Putnam and Quine wave well Vence orman quine there were p and saul kripke there were people there oh yeah there there is loss aversion yeah the philosophers they were willing to ask big questions to some extent but but I was more on the mathematic side and I know the mood as an undergraduate - at Caltech I loved physics I loved the stuff that I was doing chemistry astronomy but the scientist just wants to just jump in and get into all this neat stuff without asking the questions why does it why is it possible yeah and and so it's a the atmosphere of philosophical materialism is really an atmosphere that is never questioned that has never brought up for discussion in a typical science curriculum yeah and that that's that's so strange to me you would imagine especially in these institutions of higher learning that you would seek to study these things you know I've read some some folks on this you know philosophy of science you mentioned the Quine of course is a big name but Karl Popper as well as another name that arises and these are not you know reformed van Chileans but they're nevertheless people that are willing to seek to investigate the the reaches in the depths of scientific investigation and I'm not a scientist you know I did a bit of science and undergraduate before switching to business and then getting a better GPA in business but I you know at the time you're it's important to study these deep foundations and to realize that when the things that pass for scientific truth nowadays and I'm not one to scoff it at you know all matter of scientific discourse and just throw it out and say it's unbelieving thought and I don't believe in any of it I believe in God's common grace I believe I have a very robust understanding of God's common grace in the way that unbelievers can come to God's truth unwittingly in spite of their foundational beliefs but at the same time a lot of what goes is scientific dogma is not even obtainable through the scientific method itself III I failed to know how we could somehow reproduce an experiment on the creation of the universe I mean it has anyone figured that one out yet I mean that's just maybe that's a simplistic question but we're seeking to present things as scientific yet they were not conclusions of a pure and true scientific process am I wrong I don't know well one of the distinctions that's valuable this distinction between experimental science yeah and historical science well and and when you're talking about either the creation in the universe or the creation of different kinds of life yeah that's a historical question because it only happened once sure and the dramatic triumph of science have been in the area of experimental and sometimes theoretical interacting with experimental where you've got a chance to repeat experiments over and over again and then you can see a regular pattern but when something happened only once you're a bit in a quandary you try to mess you can but here's where the issues of the philosophy come in because you're dealing with things that that if they happen only once then if you're a materialist they must because you're already assuming there is no God and that if there is he wouldn't interfere with the process and so one of the big arguments for Darwinism is well we're here and all these kinds of animals are here and so obviously it must have been some kind of gradual process right however unlikely it looks in the current state of our science except it's getting worse you know in terms of what the experimentalist are doing they're finding more and more complexities in in the cell and the issues of the origin of the universe well various things that have been tried but nothing has really substituted for just saying God did it this raises a question for me and that is the question between the question of the relationship between science and scripture how our nature and the study of nature and scripture related and how much should natcher or natural revelation come into play in our interpretation of special revelation right that's again one of those hermeneutical questions which i think is can be very weighty because if you let the latest claims of the scientists drive everything then you're going to make the bible conform to that regardless of how hard it is or how non-obvious because the bible is is not saying what you wanted to say on the other hand you can some people feel it almost necessary to write off the whole of science because there are these hot-button issues of conflict so the idea with it some in the book redeeming science I return to it in this latest book of interpreting Eden because it is an interpretive question and my basic answer is that the Bible has a priority in two respects one is that it's the Word of God verbally expressed God rules the entire universe by speech let there be light in there is light and there's many examples of that but we don't have direct access to that kind of ruling commands except of course when the exceptional case like Genesis 1 3 when God tells us that he he uttered a particular commandment we now have direct access to that verbal material and so the uniqueness of Scripture comes out as verbal what the scientists are doing I think is interpreting the effects of that divine sovereign rule and then doing their best extrapolating gas work because they're made in the image of God and again common Krait comes in they're doing their best they're both their best guess as to what the underlying laws are but if you understand that basic process you understand that scientists and all goodwill can make those best guesses that they can't say this is definitive because they can't cry directly into the mind of God and it's very different with God speaks to us in a language that is you know human language the other thing that gives priority the Bible is the SID the issue of sin because we need the Bible redemptive ly to restore our our whole selves but that includes our minds and and you folks I know I've discussed there's no attic effects of sin that is an extension to the mind there are many forms of sin but you can sin with your mind well that kind of thing has to be restored by the Bible and the typical academic doesn't want to hear that he wants to be able to just do his own thing without as what he looks like interference but this is good interference its interference we need for our spiritual and mental health so those things give priority the Bible and that means that it's more about fitting science into the worldview that the Bible presents a word view where there's an orderly universe because God made it where there's divine mind that is behind that order and where we are created in the image of God and that's actually some of the fundamental building blocks in the progress of early modern science when you deal with people like Bernanke's Galileo Johannes Kepler John I think it's sir Isaac Newton those people they were living an environment where they understood these things fit together there's a world there's a God we're made the image of God that gives us a stance whereby we can hope to understand things so that's very different from a materialism that really can't account for the mind at all that's it's not it's not a good platform to build science on and well sure sue if if I'm a secular scientist and I hear what you're saying a secular scientist might get nervous and start to say something along the lines of well how then do we you know how do we prevent the Christian from using the Bible to provide you know suppose it scientific data kind of like how like I can ken ham does where where the Scriptures end up getting used are examined for for for details about either scientifical scientific data or facts or something like that so that if there's a contradiction between what we find in the scientific exploration and then what is there in the Bible you know we come up across a difficult question of which we go with so for instance you know the classic example that comes up is is the you know the the an older model of the universe where where the earth ended up inhabiting the center of the universe and supposedly that was because in part the the scientific data was being read through Scripture where it appeared as if the Sun was revolving around the earth etc so how do we maybe put at ease that that's not what we're trying to do impose the Bible on the scientific exploration so as to provide unwarranted information or data whatnot yeah well that's a excellent question Jim I don't know that there's an easy answer because there's a lot of people out there that have his own view is kind of caricature of the Christian faith and their view of the Bible is a kind of caricature of the Bible at the same time there are Christians who I think failed to represent Christianity with maximal uhh a race you might say so but in terms of a positive answer I think what I'd say is that one of the keys is to understand that God in the Bible though he knows everything he's not surprised by nuclear energy and and quantum mechanics and you know all this modern stuff I mean he's the author of it today but though he is the Bible is designed very specifically to address us you might say at an ordinary human level where we most need it his sin and righteousness and guilt salvation are about us and his whole people not about sort of narrow precision istic kind of questions about particular things in science so what God does in Genesis is to dust first of all the ancient Israelites but then also every culture of the world and pretty including you think about it all these cultures that are still around to some extent that have no contact with modern science so he addresses them in the wisest possible way by saying I'm gonna address you in terms of the things that you could see not in terms of explaining quantum mechanics I mean God could overwhelm us with some kind of explanation that none of us would understand hmm yeah but it he doesn't have to prove himself that way he's interested in this personal relationship which is it more related to look you know you see the Sun you see the moon I made those things it's the that kind of level that is at the heart of what he's doing in Genesis and indeed most of the rest of the Bible so I think when people go to the Bible looking for some kind of detailed esoteric scientific information they're likely to miss read it so that's again a hermeneutical question of saying let's set a context in what kind of communication God is it is engaging in in the Bible and understand that actually much of Genesis 1 this is part of the book that is new over against what I did earlier much of Genesis one is talking to ordinary people by comparing what God is doing once and for all in creating things with what he's now doing and sustaining them so the creation of plants and animals in the day three and day six is to be understood analogous to what he's now doing and bringing forth new generations of the same kinds of plants and animals well there's a uniqueness to creation but the ordinary person who's dealing he's a farmer or he's a herdsmen or something like that he says okay you know what I'm dealing with is something that I owe to God from front to back all the way through so it's an ordinary level of communication so I think that helps to set this thing in a context where we're not competing to make the Bible some kind of precision is a scientific document though it addresses the whole world you take the issue of you know the earth-centered universe I think that was a ghastly mistake that was perhaps due partly to the fact that even in ancient times the Christian theologians were trying to show that the Bible measured up to in this case Ptolemaic astronomy the only astronomy and to find things in the Bible instead of saying look this is to us in terms of what we can see it isn't an astronomical theory it isn't earth centered or Sun centered or anything else centered in terms of a details of how we explain the moosh motion of the heavenly bodies rather it's talking on an ordinary level of what we can see so that would have allowed people to say well astronomy can do its thing it's a legitimate perspective and here I bring in my emphasis on perspectives we're capable as human beings of having multiple perspectives reflecting the the plurality of persons in the Trinity we should just say we can have a kind of person-centered perspective when we're thinking about the world in its ordinary experience or we can have a sort of detailed astronomical perspective where we're doing calculations and we say what's the easiest way to work this out and to understand the actual spatial measurements that exist between the different heavenly bodies it's two perspectives that ought not ever to a quarrel with one another but that depends you see on a Christian worldview where your personalistic if you're not then you're likely to think there is some one absolute point of view that is the right one everything else is got to be moved out as false yeah that's a tremendous point you've developed this not only in class but in other books as well and listeners may be interested to follow up on this and especially on the the important hermeneutical principle and understanding of phenomenology and phenomenal phenomenological language I should say if you just search for a phenomenology you might end up in some odd logical positivism and whatnot but in terms of this perspective just very simple example when the Bible says the Sun rises that's not a false statement but if you want to speak about that from a scientific perspective we understand how the earth rotates on an axis and spins around the Sun and it gives the perception of the Sun going up and down and a horizon that's a phenomenological language in the Bible which is in no sense contradictory or competitive with scientific perspective both are true but there's not two truths so to speak but two perspectives on the single truth you know your point of Genesis and its ability to communicate universally is tremendous I listen to a entire podcast episode from this program called 99% invisible which is a program devoted to design and they were speaking with with scientists and others who were seeking to develop a our just warning signs for for radioactive waste in the desert but they were seeking to come up with us semiology and symbols that would communicate potentially to humans or other life-forms in their view ten thousand years from now and so how could we communicate that there's something dangerous to everyone even ten thousand years from now as a tremendous program and and it just goes to show God can do that in Genesis it's easy for him he's the Lord of all creation it's actually more difficult if we want to think in a human perspective for God to communicate that way than it would be to give us all the secrets of science he could do that and you know if we knew them we could write that in a textbook but but communicating in the way that God did is even more majestic I think than writing a textbook for us camden that raises another question just about the nature of scripture itself we're talking about the disproportionality between god and man and how god in communicating with me on comes to our level speaks to us in a language that is human in a manner that we can understand I wonder if dr. fortress can comment on just the nature of Scripture itself as accommodated language yes it's a good point everything in the Bible is wisely adapted by God so that it's accessible to us on the other hand is also infinitely deep it's a we come to know the God who made us so that accommodation must not be thought of as something that sort of cuts off the depth level of Scripture but that depth level is found in the communion with God rather than in scientific expertise which of course God has all that expertise but that's that's not the focus of what he's trying to do because it's the focus is first of all personal communion if there's any one thing in terms of worldview that I would single out as being important for reading the Bible but also for reading modern world it's this emphasis in the Bible that God is personal and what we've got is this meant what I call the philosophical materialism we've got this philosophical materialism it's dominating and influencing elite culture here in the Western world that says it's all atoms in motion and that we are a cosmic accident and that we can make our own meanings because there isn't any innate meaning right but that's got it got it completely in reverse because it's God who is personal who made us and and made us so that we can have and he had tended to establish a personal relationship with us and so in some respects human beings are the most important things in the whole universe more important than the Milky Way galaxy because we're made the image of God and the Milky Way galaxy can't have a personal relationship with know if one created her so anyway I think that's vitally important so that we understand why or something at least of course God does as he pleases but we understand something of why the Bible is what it is and don't think that it has to be impressive in terms of spewing out scientific detail because the most impressive thing of all is to be able to have a personal relationship with your Creator through which of course God provides in Christ it's problematic because of sin but not because we're finite you know there are so many things to discuss I really encourage people to pick up this book and read it in great depth and detail but there's a few things I'd like to at least mention while we have you here to discuss some more of the the specifics within the book because I think there are several hot-button issues and important things that people would like to dis one of those is the the cosmology of the Old Testament and there much has been made in recent scholarship and there seems to be some sort of scholarly consensus whether or not you you want to validate that I'll leave that to you but there's many people that have a certain view or an understanding of what the Old Testament person what the Israelite thought about the world and how it was built would you be able to describe to us a bit about that cosmology and how people interface that with the Genesis account well the basic picture is of what they call the three-decker universe right the heaven above the earth on which we walk and then there's some kind of underworld or waters under the earth and then it goes on from there basically - to say that the heavens the third the uppermost part is as depicted as a solid dome which holds up the heavenly water and it goes on and on and there's windows that God opens right and then the water pours out yeah but if you you ask where does this come from there are passages in the Old Testament that might suggest it but they're primarily poetic passages and if you're thinking if you're trying to describe God as making the universe one of the best analogies available is human beings building a house yeah or setting up a tent so in fact you've got these comparisons but it isn't I don't think it's speculation about the physical composition of the heavens kind of solid dome and in fact that that's inconsistent with some of the other things that you find the the Bible talking about so what we've got is that people some of the Old Testament people I think have grabbed onboard some of the ancient near-eastern material around a Bible as well as certain phraseology in the Bible and they've taken it with a kind of wooden literalness that doesn't respect the fact that it's using analogies that it's producing sort of vivid pictures for God ruling over the world rather than some physical fistic theory about what holds the heavens up so had the result of that then is it then that's read into the Old Testament and then it's claimed well that's obsolete so we must sort of reinterpret the whole of the Old Testament as we depend on this obsolete cosmology or or somehow substitute start to put Genesis in a different genre bucket well there must be a myth in or something right and that's another big issue is it not I mean the in terms of how how are we then to understand you know genre as it pertains to Genesis it gets complicated because even in some of those early chapters we have genre within genre right well Genesis in terms of the literary structure is a very complicated book by God's own design I believe and has various kind of sub types of literature genealogies poems individual accounts of you know histories of things that happened to the patriarchs and all sewn together in terms of an overall storyline of how God is working out whose Redemption through the seed of the woman so there's theological things but they're not in tension with the history but I think what I'd say about this tendency to to bring into mythology it's two things one is on the level of content nearly everybody recognizes that Genesis is is monotheistic thoroughly monotheistic now some of the critics will find traces of an earlier polytheism jdb right yeah that's all speculative it's thoroughly monotheistic and so if you really believe that that this kind of God made the world then this is the true story as over against the corrupt and counterfeit stories of the Union because everybody has to wrestle with general revelation of God and what they do is they corrupt that so it's no wonder that there are certain correspondences in content between Genesis and these ancient near-eastern things but that's because it's the difference between the counterfeit and the true the other thing in terms of more the kind of literary things is that that actually if you go in the ancient Near East there's nothing that's literally anywhere close to Genesis the closest thing you find are in the other Hebrew historical narratives later on so you get numbers yeah at first and second Samuel 1st 2nd Kings right that's the same kind of genre in terms of a literary approach that is focusing on the way you put together the material in language rather than on the content if you focus on content the nearest stuff is some 104 which is a poem mm-hmm about creation that's actually based on Genesis 1 Genesis 1 is prose and this in poetry so those are very different genres in the ordinary sense of genre but the same subject matter so once you sort that all out you find Genesis doesn't compare well in terms of closeness to anything in the ancient Near East I asked in Oh weeks who is much more an expert than I do I sent him an email and say no well is there anything there an Asian or East that's this kind of John he said basically no so really we should be comparing Genesis with this later material in terms of it being what I call non fictional narrative it's a story of what happened in time and space mm-hmm how then do we address the charge this might be opening up too much other material for the sake of it but so you can feel free to reject the question but how then do we address the charge later editors and and whatnot and and trying to treat Genesis as some etiological document where it's written later but it is a way to describe things that we don't have explanations for it the press right well it has been done yeah the reason being that there's a fundamental divide and you folks you know again it's pretty substitution lies do you understand you're either serving God or you're against him there's a fundamental divide that goes through all of humanity it goes through the scholarly world and then within that the next question is what sort of discourse is the we have in Genesis in the rest of the Bible we would answer we have discourse verbal communication that is divinely spoken that makes a huge difference because then God who is sovereign over all can use processes it's possible nobody knows it's possible that the material was written by Moses in Genesis based on orally material that Joseph the son of Jacob had compiled if you think about it Joseph had the resources he was second-in-command of Egypt mm-hmm who knows what was there we don't know maybe God gave it fresh to Moses without any you know preceding material we don't know if God is doing it you're not in control you can't say well you can't do that yeah but if you're not if you're on the other side of this divide and you think this is a purely human product and because there are similarities with some of the stories of that people tell to themselves about creation or your early history of their tribe and all this stuff it must be essentially the same kind of thing it must be a sort of gradual istic thing that happened and so of course you've got to produce a story based on your you that this is merely human and merely gradual istic in origin it's evolution istic and actually you know some of the history biblical scholarship of this critical kind goes along with the origins of Darwinism of everything is to be explained in terms of evolutionary gradual istic processes whether it's in human history or whether it's in biological history so my point is look you've got a whole framework in a background if your framework is God really exists then whether he uses processes people like Joseph people early further people like Enoch and Noah you know who knows how much of their material was passed on to their children we don't know it doesn't matter in the end right right because we haven't assurance because of it being God's Word that it is divinely trustworthy so that sort of cuts off all the speculation and that's what it is it's nothing more than speculation as to well what sources are behind this you know how do we date them and so on yeah it consumes generations of scholars in the major university of U of Europe and to no avail because there's no there's no clear answer let me take that opportunity to transition to another question but but push back not because this is my own view but just as a plan I don't ever like to be the devil's advocate because I don't like him and I don't advocate for anything he's doing but just to be the proverbial questioner here some some people might say okay well where do where do we stop with that response then because we can say we don't know how the Bible was transmitted it could have been done through a variety of processes under the under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit we know the product is good and that God started it now I know I'm oversimplifying it this is for the sake of conversation what about folks who might say well I want to leave the door wide open for the way God actually created maybe he's describing it to us in phenomenological language but what if he used a divinely superintended process through you know theistic evolution for example and where do we understand what Genesis is telling us and where do we where do we draw the line in terms of what's worth attacks and not and and what does Genesis itself teaching us about these matters so that we aren't just leaving them to open speculation and then treating Genesis as some form of creative recasting of an unknown event right well you know I think my argument that the Genesis fits into the category of of nonfiction prose narrative I mean that's kind of a technical label for it but it's doing the same kind of thing that you've got in 1st and 2nd Samuel this is setting itself to you as something these are things that happened and and in Samuel and kings there's actually citations of earlier documents some of which were around at the time we've not lost so it's clear that they are aware of the fact that that people are writing about things that are actually happening in time and space and I get into the fact that there's these neat little cases where people tell fictional stories either to deceive people or as a parable that's going to catch them like Nathan's parable - David that shows that people even back then knew the difference difference between fiction and nonfiction sure sure it's a kind of universal human we tend to always want scholars always want to think that the Israelites are idiots exactly yeah I think there's a lot of cultural pride that goes into the modern world but my point is if you get that basic thing that this is nonfiction prose narrative then that sets you on the right track but you also got recognize that in the purpose of God Genesis is the first piece of a larger and developing canon so that it's not intended to ask answer all the possible questions we might have so the uniqueness for instance of Adam and Eve is confirmed by later scriptures and that helps to tie it down in terms of this is there really are talking about the first man and first woman from the whole human race descended I know that's disputed and I can't you know again easily that could take a separate role but I'm trying to establish hermeneutical guidelines they say this is the only direction of reasoning that really makes sense once you take into account both what Genesis is mmm-hmm at what the rest of Scripture is but there's also the problem I think of people over reading anticipating more information in Genesis than what it actually gives I had this experience when I was dealing with the question of the inerrancy and harmonization of the Gospels oh yes sure now you've got four different accounts no one of which is an exact duplicate of the others even when it goes down to the same event the feeding of the 5,000 that's in all four Gospels but there are variations in detail and it's easy if you just read one of those to say oh I've got the whole picture and then to find some conflict with something else because actually you you filled in details unconsciously as you read one account in the gospel you filled in details for instance there's the guttering demoniac that that exorcism that Jesus performs Matthew mentions to gathering Demoniacs a mark and Luke only mentioned one so if you only read mark you would picture the fact there's only one and and feel I've got that nailed down well he never says oh by the way there is only one he he probably picked out the one who is more prominent for benefit of focus but it's easy to over-read that I think the same is true of Genesis particularly as we're under pressure from modern science that we expect some kind of massive technical detail that that God is just is not giving us he's giving what he's giving us it's true it's completely true as is each account in the Gospels but it's selective and it's Ordinary right it's it's aiming at as we've talked about it every person in every culture of the world rather than answering questions of what this the Sun made out of can you tell that from this is one the answer is no yeah yeah I think that's that that's a helpful way to think about it and tremendously beneficial I mean and it's certainly instructive for me and and for others I think is always underscores the proper way we need to be approaching Scripture and especially these first chapters of Genesis you know I we've mentioned before the the episode started just the Opie C's study committee report on days of creation that's available on the website and I'd like to point people to that because it does sketch out in a helpful way the non negotiable aspects and the exegetical reasons we hold to those of Genesis but there are some aspects of the creation account that have been controversial and certainly arise in presbytery exams and session exams and and even just among brothers and sisters in the Lord who have divided some different denominations have even divided over over different issues one of those is the days of length or the length of the days that are described in in those early chapters and it was probably my absolute favorite article that's included in this book was the one on time in Genesis 1 and this we could devote probably two or three full episodes just to this but dr. portress I would I would feel that I had failed if I did not at least open this subject and allow you to speak to it and some of the complexities are maybe not complexities but the depth of the issue when we start to speak of time in Genesis one would you be willing to describe some of those complexities and perplexities to us and maybe that'll be helpful for meditation for many of our listeners well yeah I think there are depths to it and it's because we live in what you might call a providential order that God is continually supervising where there's a large number of rhythms of temporal rhythms that are in tune with one another and that's what what makes science go in a lot of its dimensions so there are there are ticks of clocks there swinging pendulums there's the movement of the of the Sun and sky there's a you know modern technical ways of of measuring the passing of seconds by the vibration of a certain spectral line and cesium atoms I mean it gets really technical but all those are in tune with one another in a natural way because of the Marvel of God's in his in his covenant yeah absolutely and Noah you know said he says to Noah that seed time and harvest summer winter day and night will not cease so we got all this regular order but if you look back into the first six days you realize that some of those elements of order are just being developed and and one of them that's really central for us is our own human you might say psychological experience of the passing of time and our interacting of other people and you know the rhythm of our hearts and and the sleep and work oscillation and that's the thing is that not all of those rhythms they're getting started and during the six days so it gets complicated to say well how do you the length of time because because you're just developing the things and I think when the common person talks about the length of days in Genesis he's already assuming the providential orderlies gotten out but of course this first six days were not completely like that so I like to talk about the fact there's a lot of things God is doing for the first time and therefore we've got to think very carefully about what even we mean when we say such-and-such takes a certain amount of time but I also want to say one more thing Camden and that is I think there's a larger cultural context that has made it more difficult for all of us and I'll use the example with premillennialism because there are a lot of Bible believing Christians at one time that fell we need premillennialism as a kind of litmus test of whether people are sound why because that tests hermeneutics you know if you have a certain kinds of hermeneutics and reading the Bible that you will end up as a premillennialists and people many ordinary people I think didn't know well how to deal with theological liberalism and even worse new orthodoxy where some of the smart people were using the vocabulary of the Bible but they were meaning something different than what the Bible meant how could you you know smoke these people out before you hired them to be your pastor Yeah right so premillennialism i think became valuable i I wouldn't put all my eggs in the primulas basket but I want to say I appreciate why people felt that they had to do that and they say yeah well I agree I mean I I served in a I'm recalling your book on understanding dispensationalist and I served in a disparate and serve I was a attended in a dispensationalist Church for several years before coming to Westminster and I would take a dispensationalists over over a liberal any day of the week because they love the Bible and they take it serious right Acela the same goes you see for the people who say we believe in six 24-hour day creation well how long is an hour right an hour is one twenty-fourth of a day so so you can say that circuit are you defining an hour in terms of a day in your training finding a day that's why for hours so you got to go a little further but the people who use that model the motto I think what they're trying to get at is we're concerned with somebody who is bringing in some fancy hermeneutics it's just going to dissolve scripture in front of our eyes yeah so you know I I'm with them as you say rationalist because these people believe the Bible they believe it is the Word of God and I feel a fundamental kinship Alvin Plantinga does something similar and it's because he was so well respected in the secular world it's all the more amazing that he says my spiritual kinship is with the fundamentalist yeah you know and and he says I don't agree with a young earth thing in details but I do agree with the spiritual atmosphere well that's you know that's perceptive I think that we we got to recognize who are our real friends and enemies are and the enemies are out there the people who are in rebellion against God and it won't accept the divine voice right won't accept that the Bible is the Word of God that's the fundamental divide oh of course along with loyalty to Christ I don't want him in dichotomize but but the fundamental divide is between the people who are determined to follow Christ at all costs and the people who are looking over the shoulders and well many of them not following Christ at all but even the ones who are wanting to be Christians wanting to have their cake but to eat it too in terms of having peace with the the elite culture of the world around them well it's not going happen right this too much of false religion false philosophy underlying that elite secular called yeah and it's corrupting a lot of things so I sympathize with the people who just get so suspicious right of the world that they feel like just with drawing into a ghetto and saying you know we we can't deal with this we just got to have our own Christian community well I think we're called on to continue to interact but it has to be with a lot of wisdom and it has to be with I would hope it doesn't have to be but but I would hope it uses the resources of of Ave and Hills apologetics to because it's so important that we understand the kind of deep level ground level differences that affect the interpretation of Genesis one two three among other things mmm Glenn did you have a comment well yeah I was just going to say that I think that's a very important pastoral insight that the doctor portress has made here concerning the underlying concern behind many who held to premillennialism and maybe to this day who holds a criminal oniel ism and also the underlying concern that many have who hold to a 24-hour review there's something that lies beneath the surface and that's that their fear of losing everything yeah yeah if we give this up then it's a slippery slope then what else are we gonna give us mm-hmm we could just make everything in the Bible figurative needs to be historical or literal anymore that's a pastoral insight I think which lotsa ought to affect the way we address the issue I agree I agree just a tie a bow on it or at least to wrap things up here I mean there there's a range of views represented by faculty members at reform forum all of us hold to you know the non-negotiables of the basics in terms of God creating X Neil Oh God creating man Adam that is directly not through a process of theistic evolution God creating Eve out of a rib of Adam and God creating in the space of six days and all very good but I am NOT gonna speak for anyone else but there there's six-day 24-hour brothers I I suspect there's a framework brother or - I personally hold to an analogical day view which at least and when you wrote redeeming science dr. portraits that was your express view that that holds the to the days being six discrete periods of God's creative activity God worked and he rested is that how you would describe it how I'll let you speak of it in your own terms it's my favorite is your favorite view but I I want to you know again because of this sparseness of scriptures account reg we need to be strong and firm where scripture is strong and clear and also to say let's leave some space oh praise God right now or more than one view and so I'm not I don't think of myself as an exclusive advocate of the analogical view I regularly mentioned the six 24-hour day view the material creation view the framework of view is another one and I think the opie statement there's a piece similar statement with the pca made on the days of creation they're both doing very much the same thing of saying there are things that are essential doctrinally for the health of the people of God but within that space there's also a range of opinions that are allowable you know that's the way to go even though in some respects it's harder than just you know no boundaries at all right sweep you away yeah or just you know here's one view this is our view but the trouble is if it's not the right view then you're going to create problems later on for the next generation who will get restless with the brittleness of of what you've committed yourself yeah I appreciate that you putting it that way that that's your favorite view I would i I'm gonna start saying that too because I think I'm most convinced of that but there's certainly many things that had you know are left to be desired but I find that personally for exegetical reasons find that to be the most satisfactory view of the ones that that I have been able to read and study and that's not to say because I've you know read some scientific journals that I think the earth has to be old I think in fact that the many of the days that are described in Genesis probably happened in a moment and didn't didn't even take a full 24 hours I don't know but they're as discrete periods of God's creative activity that God worked he did a specific thing and he rested it was evening there was morning the first day I encourage people to read in this book and especially that chapter on time but on on all the chapters and to go back and read dr. portress his book redeeming science again published back in 2006 also with Crossway I believe that book PDF of it should be available at frame - Poitras org if I'm not mistaken that's still correct yes it is yeah the interpretive Eden it interpreting Eden won't be there though for a while but the grace period has run out it's only fair yeah but I also share many of your views on intellectual property and um and there's some interesting things perhaps we could do an episode just on that and have some Christians know it sounds kind of like a joke but just on just you know thinking with a Christian worldview on on the nature of intellectual property and I'm not a like a Richard Stallman and and you know the GPL the new public license where he says all all intellectual property must be licensed a certain way at least with software but I am sympathetic to his views on certain things and I know that you release a lot of your class resources under the GPL free document license and for for principled reasons so I want to encourage you in that regard too but it's it's always good we're very thankful for cross way we're very thankful and understand that a workman's deserving of his wages and the company that pays for those for that work is also worthy of its remuneration - so anyway dr. portress no we're about out of time but I do want to thank I know we're over time but thanks so much for joining us today it it never gets it's old or stale and it's always tremendously fruitful encouraging to speak with you and I want to encourage you to keep reading keep teaching and keep following the Lord and all of your Labor's and thanks for joining us and taking taking in a little over an hour out of your day to talk to us and all the listeners thank you so much for inviting me in I I do think I pray that the book that I've written will be a help the giant help to the people of God rather than just you know making some intellectual points of course yeah and then and the book ends on that point as well there's been too many pastoral points and deeper spiritual issues here at stake - and um I thank you for that concern and that does come across in the book so the book again interpreting Eden it's available from Crossway I believe it's it's currently published I've got a pre pub copy so I'll check the dates on that if it's not out already it will be very very soon and you can find out more across Wade out of work of course copies I'm sure will be available through WT s book stock and other be more information and links to other resources on our website you can find us at reformed foreign organs will as information about all of our other programs and events and ways in which you can get in touch with us we look forward to hearing from you we want to thank everybody for listening and we hope you join us again next time on Christ a Center you

Channel: Reformed Forum

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Length: 66min 14sec (3974 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 21 2019