Review and Analysis of Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Critique

Just last year, a book came out on the topic of theistic evolution. Coming in at almost a thousand pages, this book aims to be a comprehensive rebuttal of theistic evolution, at least as taught by Biologos. I have read the book, and decided to do a review and analysis of the book, which can be read here. Here is an excerpt of my 18-page review and analysis:

How does Christianity interact with science, especially in the contested areas of cosmic and especially human origins? Some scientists, especially those linked to the organization known as Biologos, have claimed compatibility between Christianity and the findings of science, or specifically the theory of evolution. Their brand of theistic evolution is the result of their particular synthesis of what they believe to be the indisputable findings of evolutionary science, and what they believe the Bible teaches. This particular version of theistic evolution can be defined as:

God created matter and after that did not guide or intervene or act directly to cause any empirically detectable change in the natural behavior of matter until all living things had evolved by purely natural processes.¹

In an effort to refute such teaching, a group of scientists and theologians have come together to write a book to that effect, entitled Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical and Theological Critique. ...

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Book review: The Bible Among the Myths

The issue of historicity concerning Old Testament narrative, especially the first 11 chapters of Genesis, continue to remain a problem for many people. In his book The Bible Among the Myths, John N. Oswalt attempted to answer the questions concerning the Old Testament narratives and the questions of myth and history concerning them, and I have read and reviewed it accordingly, here. An excerpt:

The Bible claims to be a book that depicts historical events, all the way back to the beginning of time, or at least most Christians have always believed that from their reading of the Scriptures starting from the book of Genesis. Liberal “Christianity” since the 19th century has however cast doubt on the historicity of major events narrated both in the Old and the New Testaments, especially the first eleven chapters of Genesis 1. According to liberal scholarship, the first eleven chapters are “primeval history” which is made up of myths and legends no different from the various ancient myths and legends found among the pagan peoples of that time. The “Flood myth” in Genesis 6-9 for example is stated to be borrowed from the Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic. But if the events in the Bible are not truly history despite the fact that they claim to be history, can we trust the Bible at all?

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Book Review: The Genesis Account: A Theological, Historical, and Scientific Commentary on Genesis 1-11

Creationist and apologist Dr. Jonathan D. Sarfati of Creation Ministries International has recently published a 700 page commentary on Genesis 1-11, bringing in biblical, historical and scientific discussions into his commentary of the first eleven chapters of Genesis. I have read and reviewed it here, as follows:

The Genesis Account is a commentary of Genesis 1-11 written by Young-Earth Creationist (YEC) scientist and Christian apologist Jonathan D. Sarfati. Dr. Sarfati seeks to write this commentary as a defence of the truthfulness of Genesis, especially concerning its first eleven chapters (pp. 1-2). From a chemistry background with a working knowledge of Hebrew, Greek and theology, Sarfati seeks to write a commentary that is faithful to the biblical text, while using science ministerially to explicate how scientific findings can be seen to buttress the claims of Scripture (p. 4). Such is a monumental task indeed, seen in the fact that this commentary is 700+ pages in length for a mere 11 chapters of Genesis. [more]

John Walton and the blurring of creation and providence

The Bible to some extent offers the idea that creation is ongoing and dynamic. So theologian Jürgen Moltmann believes that God's creative work is not just the static work of the past, but that it is dynamic as it continues in the present and into the future. This suggestion merits consideration, but key to the discussion is the extent to which what happens after the beginning could still be called creation, or if it is something else (e.g. "sustaining"). ..

I contend that there is a line between the seven days of Genesis 1 and the rest of history, making Genesis 1 a distinct beginning that is located in the past. If we see this as an account of functional origins, the line between is dotted rather than solid as the narrative of Genesis 1 puts God in place to perpetuate the functions after they are established in the six days. In this way, day seven, God taking up his rest in the center of operations of the cosmos, positions him to run it. This continuing activity is not the same as the activity of the six days, but is the reason why the six days took place. ...

... Maintaining relates to the material and the physical existence. Sustaining relates to the functional and operational. Consequently, when we take the functional approach to origins and the theological position of God's continual sustaining work, both originating and sustaining can be seen as variations of the work of the Creator, even thought they do not entirely merge together. Genesis 1 is in the past, but the continuing activities of the Creator in the future and present are very much a continuation of that past work. In contrast to the first extreme [of seeing creation as finished -DHC], creation is not over and done with. [John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL, 2009), 120-2]

One of the beliefs that Christianity has almost unanimously held is the belief that creation is finished. God is not creating ex nihilo anything today, for creation is complete and God now is operating through providence. It is almost such an axiomatic belief that I can't even think of anyone in church history who has ever claimed that God is still continually creating.

Enter OT Professor John Walton, who has decided to change terms to his liking. Redefining creation to be "functional," Walton reasons that there is no reason to restrict creation to the past. In his own words, while the "seven days of Genesis 1" are separate from the "rest of history," the line is "dotted rather than solid." In other words, there is not a phase of history called "creation," and the other phases that are clearly not creational. Rather, for Walton, the difference between the "seven days of Genesis 1" and "the rest of history" is quantitative not qualitative, a matter of degree rather than of kind.

In one sense, Walton, because of his redefinition of creation as being "functional," is not promoting a continuous "material" creation today. However, in another sense, this blurring between creation and providence is extremely problematic because God's role of Creator is cast almost as purely "functional" and thus, while the material is not denied, it is as it were erased from sight. Since when we looked at the issue philosophically, we see that the term "functional ontology" is nonsensical, the correct nature of Walton's thesis is that God is only the God of teleology and not ontology, or at the very least we are agnostic about God's creation of ontology. (And for consistency's sake, Walton should interpret all creation passages including the one in Colossians 1 as speaking of "functional ontology.") So after Walton has interpreted Genesis 1 as speaking about "functional ontology," upon what basis can he claim that God is the God who has created all matter ex nihilo? How is he able to refute (or does he refute) a person who claims that God does not create matter but rather mould what is already present? In other words, if someone claims that matter is eternal and that God is only in charge of moulding it into functional things, where in Scripture can (or will) Walton go to refute that?

The blurring of creation and providence should naturally flow over into the line of new creation, or the Eschaton. If biblical creation concerns function while being agnostic about matter, then recreation or the Last Day should be about function as well and also similarly agnostic about matter. Since the difference between pre-creation and creation in Genesis is the communication of function, then the line between the present time and the new creation in Revelations should also be the communication of function, not material changes. If Walton is consistent with his "functional ontology," then the Eschaton should be interpreted likewise, especially since Revelation is in the apocalyptic genre. At the return of Christ, there is no real burning up of the elements by fire (2 Peter 3:12), for that ought to be interpreted "functionally" not "materially." The new heavens and the new earth is merely functional modification of the current existing heavens and earth, which means Walton shouldn't be expecting a paradise without earthquakes and human death by natural disasters in the new heavens and earth. And the parallels can go on, for the difference must be quantitative only not qualitative.

Such is the logical conclusion of Walton's reinterpretation of Genesis 1 as being about "functional ontology." If Walton does not go there, that is only because of blessed inconsistency, not because his theory does not lead there. One must apply the same hermeneutical principles consistently to the text, so if a text that has the form of historical narrative is interpreted as being about "functional ontology," there is no reason why passages that are parabolic (Prov. 8) or hymnic (Col. 1) should be interpreted "materially." While certainly I have no reason to doubt Walton's sincerity, his hermeneutic and "exegesis" runs contrary to the Christian faith and must be rejected.

Creation, the "Cosmic Temple" and the flow of typology

First in line is the curious fact that the number seven appears so pervasively in temple accounts in the ancient world and in the Bible. Thus the seven days of the Genesis account of origins has a familiarity that can hardly be coincidental and tells us something about the seven-day structure in Genesis 1 that we did not know before and that is not transparent to modern readers. That is, if Genesis 1 is a temple text, the seven days may be understood in relation to some aspect of temple inauguration. What would days of inauguration have to do with creation? What is the connection? If Genesis 1 were an account of material origins, there would be no connection at all. But as an account of functional origins, creation and temple inauguration fit hand in hand. Given the relationship of the temple and the cosmos, the creation of one is also the creation of the other. The temple is made functional in the inauguration ceremonies, and therefore the temple is created in the inauguration ceremony. So also the cosmic temple would be made functional (created) in an inauguration ceremony.

We must draw an important distinction between the building of a temple and the creation of a temple. ... The temple uses that which is material, but the temple is not material. If God is not in it, it is not a temple. If rituals are not performed by a serving priesthood, it is not a temple. If those elements are not in place, the temple does not exist in any meaningful way. A person does not exist if only represented by their corpse. It is the inauguration ceremony that transforms a pile of lumber, stone gold and cloth into a temple. [John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL, 2009), 86-7]

Flowing from his postulation that the Genesis account is about "functional ontology," Walton states that it is focused on the inauguration of the cosmic-temple, using analogies from other ANE temple accounts to make his case. Now, we have already established that Walton's main argument collapses because of his philosophical confusion. Thus, applying the correct categories and discounting the idea of "functional ontology," we will say that the ontology of a temple consists of a building, sacred object(s), priest(s), and ritual(s) to connect with the divine. Its telos is to function as a site for religious devotion. As such, the inauguration of a temple completes it by adding the elements necessary for its ontology. Now of course, an empty temple building is still called a "temple," but that is to focus on the building with the understanding that the other elements are supposed to be present there. A "temple building" without those elements has a temple architecture, but it is not in fact a temple.

Concerning the ANE, the supposed seven days in the ANE temple accounts might parallel the seven days of creation, but we can say that it is expected if we hold that the ANE accounts are corruptions of the true religion. More serious is the supposed parallel between the Genesis creation and the temple accounts themselves. But here, we must ask ourselves, why do we assume that the temple inauguration is not meant to reflect something, instead of the other way seeing the creation account as a reflection of temple inauguration?

Here, we come to the issue of typology, which is to say that there are types and shadows throughout the Bible where the type prefigures what it intends to portray. If we start with creation, then it seems clear that temple accounts are meant to reflect the creation of the universe, especially the first garden-temple of Eden. In other words, creation comes first, and the temple accounts were meant to typify it in their worship. This is in contrast to the approach taken here, and taken by those like Peter Enns, that make the creation texts typify the ANE and Israel in her religious life. That approach is wrong because it makes a primary theme of Scripture (i.e. creation) into a type of a secondary theme (the cultic element, which prefigures Christ and the salvation He purchased). Both Walton and Enns reverse the flow of typology in this area, and thus they are in error in how they read these texts.

Genesis, "Ancient Cosmology" and "Functional Ontology"

In this book I propose that people in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system. Here I do not refer to an ordered system in scientific terms, but an ordered system in human terms, that is, in relation to society and culture. In this sort of functional ontology, the sun does not exist by virtue of its material properties, or even by its function as a burning ball of gas. Rather it exists by virtue of the role that it has in its sphere of existence, particularly in the way that it functions for humankind and human society. In theory, this way of thinking could result in something being included in the "existent" category in a material way, but still considered in the "non-existent" category in functional terms ... In a functional ontology, to bring something into existence would require giving it a function or a role in an ordered system, rather than giving it a function or a role in an ordered system, rather than giving it material properties. Consequently, something could be manufactured physically but still not "exist" if it has not become functional ... Unless something is integrated into a working, ordered system, it does not exist. Consequently, the actual creative act is to assign something its functioning role in the ordered system. That is what brings it into existence. Of course something must have physical properties before it can be given its function, but the critical question is,what stage is defined as "creation"? [John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove, IL, 2009), 24-5]

Q: Why can't Genesis 1 be both functional and material?
A: Theoretically it could be both. But assuming that we simply must have a material account if we are going to say anything meaningful is cultural imperialism. We cannot demand that the text speaks to us in our terms. Just as we cannot demand a material account, we cannot assume a material account just because that is most natural to us and answers the questions we most desire to ask. We must look to the text to inform us of its perspective. In my judgment, there is little in the text that commends it as a material account and much that speaks against it. (Ibid., 170)

On the issue of origins, John Walton has came up with a variant reading of the Genesis creation account, one which he claims is the natural reading of the text as interpreted in its ANE (Ancient Near-East) context. Whereas others have interpreted the Genesis account either as literal, analogical, or framework, Walton claims that the actual interpretation of the Genesis account is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the material creation. Rather, it depicts the inauguration of the cosmic-temple of the world, the world's "functional ontology" rather than its "material ontology." Walton has one major argument to support his thesis: Ancient cosmology, and Genesis, thinks in terms of function not matter. But does his thesis actually stand up to scrutiny?

I have posted on the issue of ancient cosmologies before. As I have said, there is a certain idea of the ANE as one of general backwardness, in the sense of the ancients creating myths to explain the world, myths which are not based on true transcendental truths but just created to explain what they had experienced. Now, at least some historians will hasten to add that the ancients do believe those myths to be in fact true, but it only compounds the problem of people creating fiction, and then believing the fiction they have just created to be true. The only religion that fits this idea of "myth" is Scientology. Other religions claim some measure of transcendentality, whether they be true or not is besides the point as to how they see their claims as squaring with reality.

Right from the start therefore, there is prima facie evidence to distrust any sort of "ANE context" that supposedly changes the teaching of the Genesis account that has been held to for most of the history of the church. We agree that the modern world is very much different from the pre-modern world, such that the difference between Europe in the 15th century to the modern world is much much greater than the difference between that 15th century Europe and the ANE, but just because the modern world is different does not necessarily means our understanding of what constitutes a plain reading is suspect; one has to prove and not merely assert a qualitative hermeneutical difference between ancient and modern times, and not assume that just because there is a real qualitative difference between ancient and modern times. In fact, since ANE studies are most modern, one has to wonder which view is actually imposing an alien hermeneutic on the text. Josephus for example is no modern person, yet his interpretation of Genesis sounds nothing like the supposed "ANE contextual" interpretation that those like Walton proposes. Surely Walton isn't going to accuse Josephus of engaging in "cultural imperialism"?!

So now we go into Walton's argument itself. Walton claims that the Genesis account is about functional existence, not material existence. Creation is all about purpose, not just the bare fact of a thing existing. First of all, I really want to know where this language of "functional ontology" comes from. The goal or purpose of a thing is its teleology, not its ontology. "Ontology" is the nature of a thing, what a thing IS. To speak about a "functional ontology" seems to me to be a conflation of separate philosophical concepts. If Walton has in mind the distinction of creating something for a purpose as opposed to creating something without a purpose, then the former ("functional ontology") is merely ontology with teleology, while the latter is dysteleological ontology. Ontology exists independent of teleology, for water is still ontologically water whether it sits in a basin, or whether it is used ("functionally") to wash a wound.

As part of his promotion of of his category of "functional ontology," Walton asks what the ontology of a curriculum is (p. 23). Since a curriculum has no "material ontology," but is created for the purpose or function of teaching, therefore he states that there is such a category as "functional ontology." But ontology is not just about "material things," but just "things." The ontology of a curriculum consists of a lesson plan, student handouts and a list of materials (e.g. books) for students to acquire, while its teleology is for the purpose of guiding a student's education. Looking at another example, the ontology of a committee is a group of men and women gathered with a telos, and that telos is to have a meeting to deal with indicated subject(s) of interest. Walton seems absolutely confused over philosophical concepts, and limiting ontology to material things is one of the most egregious errors in this regard.

So the modified question raised by Walton concerns not whether the Genesis account is about "material ontology" or "functional ontology," but rather whether an account of something being created for a purpose precludes a material creating. In other words, can one describe only teleology without ontology? First of all, as a modified supralapsarian, I believe that God does EVERYTHING with a purpose, including the ordering of the divine decrees. Thus, to state that God has created something with a purpose does not prove anything, for everything God has created has a purpose. Therefore, Walton, in proving that the Genesis text speak about how everything has a telos doesn't prove that the text is speaking only about teleology and not ontology, since for God, all created things have a telos.

Back to the question: Can one describe only teleology without ontology? Theoretically, I do not see any reasons why one cannot do that. But saying this does not mean that Walton is vindicated, for he has shown us no proof that the Genesis account ever intends to be not about ontology. Since I have stated that all things to God have a purpose, proving that God has a purpose in creating, or just that the created things have purposes period, proves nothing. Literarily, the material parts and the function parts are both found in the Genesis account, thus there is no reason whatsoever to say that the Genesis account is purely teleological and not also ontological. As with regards to the other ANE stories, there is no reason likewise to think they are sincerely believed fictions instead of stories sincerely believed to correspond to reality, which brings us to the problems with seeking an "ANE cultural" context — it seems to be most modern rather than pre-modern in construction.

Walton's arguments therefore falls flat at its source, his ignorance of philosophical concepts showing. Since the historic Christian view speaks of ontology WITH teleology, it is the onus of those who disagree to prove their alternate hypotheses, like saying that Genesis is about teleology apart from an ontology. With all the ontological features mentioned in the biblical text, that does seem a most unlikely hypothesis.

Some thoughts on ANE for OT background

The biblical view of reality ... is paralleled by the pagan worldviews [ANE worldviews -DHC], which both predate and postdate the Bible. The ancient world understood that there was a supreme God,with whom all things originated and who held all authority and yet was relatively inactive in human affairs. But they also understood that there was another god, the storm god, who was indeed active among both divine and human affairs. A constitutional monarchy may present an analogy, in which the monarch theoretically holds authority and instructs the prime minister to form a government, but it is the prime minister who is truly active, who "gets things done." So it was in the ancient world with Enlil, Baal, Zeus, and Jupiter. ... In any case, the parallel that concerns us now is that which obtains between the pagan divine assemblies and the biblical assembly of angels, or "sons of God" (Job 1-2 RSV). Holy angels refuse human worship (c.f. Rev. 19:10), but fallen angels clearly do not, as Moses and Paul have indicated. It seems reasonable to agree with these biblical writers, and such agreement leads us to understand that the common pagan theological structure presented above is a theological counterfeit not only endorsed by all ancient pagan thought, but imposed upon the ancients by the misleading inspiration of fallen angles (or, to use Paul's words to Timothy, "doctrines of demons," 1 Tim. 4:1 RSV). [Jeffrey J. Niehaus, Ancient Near Eastern Themes in Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2008), 180-1]

From the time of German liberal Hebrew scholars like Hermann Gunkel and Friedrich Delitzsch, the discovery of the ANE (Ancient Near-East) has undermined the faith by postulating that much of the Old Testament historical narratives (especially those that deal with "pre-history") are myths borrowed and contextualized from the other ANE cultures surrounding Israel. Similarities between for example the Gilgamash Epic and the Biblical Flood account have been pointed out and used to undermine the truthfulness of Scripture. Even more subtle are the comparisons between storm imagery in the Psalms with the Ugarit Baal Epic, in an attempt to link OT spirituality with Canaanite/ Phoenician religion.

Yet the similarities are indeed present, and anyone dealing with the OT need to wrestle with that issue. German liberal scholars of course took it to mean that biblical sources borrow the myths of their neighbors, but certainly that should not be the only option possible. Great antiquity of a written source only establishes that the myth (e.g. Gilgamesh) existed at that time, but it does not establish that the "younger" tale was not present then, especially once we understand that oral culture was much more present and important in the ancient world. In other worlds, assuming priority based upon antiquity of a written source is ultimately an argument from silence, for there is no way to disprove the biblical account was present but unwritten back then.

In his book on ANE themes in biblical theology, Jeffrey J. Niehaus went through the parallels between the ANE cultures and religions with OT culture and religion. Niehaus basically postulated that the parallels are due to common grace to the pagan nations (pp. 29-30), thus God uses these common forms to instruct Israel in true religion. At the same time, Niehaus argues that it is the distorted inspiration of demons that lies behind the pagan religions (pp. 180-1). It seems to me that the two given reasons do not cohere with each other. Are the pagan religions part of God's common grace, or demonic deception? And why should God utilized demonic forms, as it were, to instruct Israel in true religion?

It seems to me that, if one takes a presuppositional approach, that we see true religion as being there from the beginning. As such, the false pagan religions of Sumer, Egypt, Babylon, Ugarit and others, are demonic distortions of the religion they once had. In other words, it is not as if they were grasping in the dark and had "evolved" their religions to this "higher" level. Rather, theirs were a devolution of the original religion they had learned from Noah. Therefore, similarities are due not to borrowing of Israel from her neighbors, but rather because paganism devolved from the true religion of Noah. Israelite religion, being a divine restoration and also an advancement of true religion, would therefore look similar to the ANE religions, since they both historically were from the same source.

Thus, instead of seeing Israel as borrowing from her pagan neighbors, it is better to see Israel as preserving the truths that the pagan religions have distorted. That includes the storm imagery, while the primal gods of paganism were probably originally meant to represent the true God before various cultures distort what they knew about the Noahic religion into paganism.

The technical view of "myth"

But many forms of narrative (including some that claim simply to recount what actually happened) are in fact governed by symbolic modes of organization. As Herbert Richardson says of myth, a significant form of narrative for our purposes, "mythical discourse rises at the level of the total story, the most complex level of linguistic utterance. The linguistic unit appropriate to myth is not the single word nor even the sentence, but the story." Thus, the truth of a narrative in this sense does not arise from the "correspondence" of its words or sentences to "reality," but from the coherence of the story as a whole. Just as a poem cannot be paraphrased conceptually without irreparable loss, neither can such narrative be. [Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 32-3]

When it comes to telling big stories about the order of existence, then, even if they are scientific stories, they will have religious implications. It is better to face this fact head on than try to deny it. ...

... myth is not science. Myth can be true, but it is a different kind of truth from the truth of science and must be judged by different criteria, ... . I would argue that the myths told by the ancient Israelite prophets, by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, by Confucius and Mencius, and by the Buddha, just to stay within the purview of this book, are all true myths. ... they are all worthy of belief, and I find it possible to believe in all of them in rather deep but not exclusive ways. (Ibid., 47)

Myth is a profoundly ambiguous word, so it would be well to be clear what Donald means by it:

Mythical thought, in our terms, might be regarded as a unified, collectively held system of explanatory and regulatory metaphors. The mind has expanded its reach beyond the episodic perception of events, beyond the mimetic reconstruction of episdes, to a comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe. Causal explanation, prediction, control—myth constitute an attempt at all three, and every aspect of life is permeated by myth.

(Ibid., 134)

In the evolutionary view, which I might add informs ANE (Ancient Near-East) studies, the mythic stage is where stories are created for the purpose of understanding the world. These stories are existential in purpose, where the goal is that the person can feel some manner of coherence in the world. As stories, they have no actual correspondence to reality, and do not need to have any. As long as a story can fulfill its existential function, it is successful. In this light, "true myth" merely means that the story is coherent, but it does not need to have any correspondence with reality, because "myth is not science."

In colloquial terms, "myth" signifies that something is fictional and thus false. In the technical discipline of the history and philosophy of religion, "myth" is stated to be "a unified, collectively held system of explanatory and regulatory metaphors," which when boiled down still means that it is false in the colloquial sense of the term, in the sense that there is a true correspondence to reality. It is in this sense that Christianity can never be said to be a "myth" or even a "true myth," for Christianity proclaims historical, philosophical and scientific correspondence with reality. Christianity is first and foremost truth, before it deals with the existential problems of Man.

It is here that I think Christians need to be careful about the unspoken premises in ANE studies. ANE studies, while most definitely not fully wrong, are not neutral with regards to their presuppositions. The turn to the narrative might sound nice and "warm" for those rejecting Modernity, but it comes with baggage that is antithetical to Christianity. Plus, unless you are a Charismatic, one shouldn't decide on a theory based upon how one feels, but upon what is true according to Scripture, even if one feels no warmth in the truth.

Language, Mimesis and Myth

In trying to describe such an evolutionary order, I have found Merlin Donald's scheme of the evaluation of culture particularly convincing. Donald shows how, in the coevolution of biology and culture, three stage of human culture—mimetic, mythic, and theoretic—developed over the last 1 or 2 millions years. The evolutionary process starts from the baseline of episodic culture, which we share with other higher mammals—that is, the capacity to recognize what episode the individual is in and what happened before in similar episodes that might give us a clue as to how to act now even though lacking what is called autobiographical memory in which the episodes are strung together in a larger story. We then proceed to mimetic culture, possibly as long as 2 millions years ago with such species as Homo erectus, in which we use our bodies to enact past and future events as well as gesture for communication. Mimetic culture, though primarily gestural, was by no means silent, and in all likelihood involved music as well as some beginning of linguistic capacity, though very simple ones. Dance may be one of the earliest forms of such mimetic culture, and dance is basic to ritual in almost all tribal societies, so, thought we can only imagine what it was like, some kind of religion may well begin in those early days. What is important to remember about Donald's scheme is that though he speaks of stages, earlier stages are not lost, but only reorganized under new conditions. Thus even in our highly verbal, and, to a degree, abstract culture, gestural communication remains basic, not only, obviously, in intimate life but in public, in our grand spectacles of sport or politics.

Sometime between 250,000 and 100,000 years ago full grammatical language developed, making complex narratives possible. Perhaps fully developed autobiographical memory depends on grammatical language and narrative and so emerged only then, or perhaps it was already foreshadowed in the mimetic stage. Donald calls the new stage mythic. Myth greatly extends the capacities of mimetic ritual in terms of what it can enact, but it does not replace it. All cultures that we know of have narrative culture intertwined with mimetic culture. I have tried to illustrate religions that are primarily mimetic and mythic under the rubric of tribal religion, being fully aware of how treacherous the word "tribe" is. But even when religions move to include a theoretic dimension, mimetic and mythic culture in reformulated ways continue to be more central; humans cannot function without them [Robert N. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), xviii-xix]

But it appears that what provided solidarity before the appearance of modern language was also more than language. Donald uses the metaphor of "language piggybacking on culture" to suggest that the appearance of language required the prior development of a complex culture in terms of which the move to language would make sense. It is the development of mimetic culture over a long period of time that in Donald's view provided greatly increased cognitive resources including the solidarity that grooming no longer, and language has not yet, provided.

...

Donald describes mimesis as an increase in conscious control over action that involves four uniquely human abilities: mime, imitation, skill, and gesture. Mime, he says, is the imaginative enactment of an event. Although apes have a rudimentary ability to mimic, mime involves acting out a sequence of events as in the pretend pay of children, a form of action that breaks with the here-and-now concreteness of episodic action. ... (Ibid., 124-5)

"... Modern humans developed language in response to pressure to improve their conceptual apparatus, not vice versa." Myth is a profoundly ambiguous word, so it would be well to be clear what Donald means by it:

Mythical though, in our terms, might be regarded as a unified, collectively held system of explanatory and regulatory metaphors. The mind has expanded its reach beyond he episodic perception of events, beyond he mimetic reconstruction of episodes, to a comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe. Causal explanation, prediction, control— myth constitute an attempt at all three, and every aspect of life is permeated by myth.

(Ibid., 134)

Religious reality is a realm of experience, to be sure, but it is also a realm of representation. In fact, experience and representation belong inexorably together. George Lindbeck has described the current major alternative theories of religion in ways that will be helpful to our exposition. The first theory of religion he describes is what he calls propositional. It sees religion as consisting of a series of propositional truth claims, stated conceptually. ... I believe that Lindbeck is right in arguing that the propositional theory of religion is inadequate as a major approach to religion and largely abandoned by scholars today. To identify religion with a set of propositions whose truth can be argued would be to make it into what more accurately should be called philosophy. ...

Lindbeck's second theory of religion is the widely influential experiential-expressive approach. This view assume that there is a general human capacity for religious experience that is actualized differently in different religious traditions. The experiential-expressive view in its modern form Lindbeck traces to Friedrich Schleiermacher, and in recent times it was widely propagated by Paul Tillich. The emphasis on B-cognition and the felt-whole in the discussion so far largely belong in the category of the experiential-expressive theory of religion. In one understanding the deep structure of religious experience exists generically in the human psyche. Particular religions are the surface manifestations of this deep panhuman experiential potentiality.

Lindbeck, however, opts for a third theory as most promising, what he calls the cultural-linguistic theory. The cultural-linguistic theory, which derives from cultural anthropology, particularly from Clifford Geertz, takes symbolic forms as primary, seeing them not so much as expressions of underlying religious emotions, but as themselves shaping religious experiences and emotions. I would agree that the cultural-linguistic approach is a valuable corrective to the experiential-expressive approach, but I don't think we have to choose between them. It seems to me that we can view them as coordinate approaches and that we need to move back and forth between them to understand the phenomenon of religion. Thus when I characterize widely different expressions as examples of Being cognition, I am not arguing that there is a subsistent reality of Being experience that simply comes out in different forms on different occasions. Rather, I am recognizing that there are some common human experiential potentialities that have recognizable similarities, but are inchoate until given shape by symbolic form. Once so shaped, their similarities are always qualified: the difference may be crucial. I am also in full agreement with Lindbeck that cultural traditions not only shape, they even call forth, emotional experiences. In short, we can see them as equally essential, like the Aristotelian notions of matter and form, and do not have to choose one approach as primary. (Ibid., 11-12)

Using evolution as the grand narrative, language, culture and religion have to evolve into existence, for apes do not really have either of these (and no, communicating via grunts while it might be basic communication is not language). According to Bellah, language follows after culture, and religion and culture flow from ritual, which comes from the mimetic stage of human development. Language is therefore a human element invented for the purpose of grasping the reality perceived. Flowing from mimesis and mythos, language consists of symbols invented by Man to attempt to grasp a perception of the world. Language is thus sensate from its beginning, and abstract thought arose only later in an attempt to go behind the already existing symbols.

It is therefore unsurprising that Bellah, when discussing Lindbeck's taxonomy of theories of religion, rejects the propositional approach and chooses and combines the theories of religion being experiential-expressivist and of it being cultural-linguistic. After all, in the evolutionary framework, religion is purely a human development stemming from ritual. It is a questing for meaning in the dark, a totally subjective search for a story to make sense of the world (i.e. myth). While religion is somewhat "denigrated," philosophy (as theoretic thought (p. 240)) fares slightly better, since of course philosophy is the precursor of all sciences to some extent. Yet even philosophy is merely a human effect to grasp at reality, a reality that has no relation whatsoever with words. Rather, we create a relation through symbolism, such that words symbolize what we perceive reality to be.

Religion therefore is not concerned with reality per se, but rather reality as symbolized in story. Philosophy is concerned with reality, yet it does so through the use of symbolic language. Both can never achieve the truth, because of the limitations of language, although it can be argued that philosophy, or rather science, is seen to approximate reality well enough for most secularists.

From a Christian point of view, there are of course a lot of problems with this evolutionary picture. Christianity claims to be an objective revelation from the God outside creation, outside of our creaturely points of view (extra nos). If the foundation of Christian knowledge is revelation, then the evolutionary picture painted here by Bellah cannot apply to Christianity. Either Christianity is false and Bellah right, or Bellah is wrong and Christianity right, on the matter of Christianity. Concerning other religions, the Christian faith have always viewed them as idolatry so it is relatively irrelevant whether they stem from ritual or not.

Principially, if Christianity is true, then revelation is true. If revelation is true, then language cannot be mere symbolics, a "piggyback[ing]" on culture (p. 131). In the beginning, God speaks. Language comes from the God who speaks, and therefore language is composed by God to be an adequate vessel of describing reality, not just signifying it. The God who composed language(s) and gave it to Man is the God who creates all things and thus the Creator and the Composer of language are one and the same Being. Language actually corresponds to reality, and abstract language do correspond to abstract objects. Does this mean that language is infallible? No, because sin distorts our use of language as well. But distortion is not destruction, and therefore language while not infallible is nonetheless still adequate. Does this mean that language connects us to God? Language is ectypal not archetypal and therefore, while perfectly suited for us, does not establish an ontic continuity between Man and God.

We see that the Christian view of language totally contradicts the evolutionary view of language. Christianity is a top-down religion, with God as the revealer from the top, while in evolution Man is the discoverer from the bottom. Naturally, a discoverer is always limited to approximation since he does not have full knowledge, whereas a revealer knows all things and therefore there is true correspondence. Humans of course do not know all things, but we are using the tool by the God who knows all things, and thus we "discover" knowing that the tool given is not a mere approximation.

Perhaps an analogy here would help. The evolutionist would have humanity like a man trapped in a huge maze without maps or tools. Such a person would blunder along trying to figure out the workings of the maze. Man under His creator however is like a man in the maze with a device that, because it has been programed with the maze layout, can show the man the way out, yet it shows only the direction not the entire map. So while the man in the evolutionary scenario can only approximate a way out (until he finds a way out i.e. gains complete knowledge), the man under His Creator knows the way out, yet He does so step by step (i.e. without complete knowledge). The competency of language therefore is not because of Man, but because of God who composes it.

Going back to Lindbeck's theories of religion, it is evident that the rejected first option must be the Christian option, though certainly it is not in line with the supposed "established" theory of evolution. Christianity is propositional, though not merely made of propositions (a common straw-man). Language, culture and true religion did not arise from play or ritual, but rather are all given by God to Adam and Eve in their created state in the Garden of Eden.

Recent consolidated articles

I have consolidated my posts on Vincent Cheung and 18th century English Hyper-Calvinism into one article here, and consolidated my review of Ronald E. Osborn's book Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, with some editing and a brief conclusion, here.

Creationism and alternate foundationalisms

Critical realism seeks to chart a third way between the epistemologies of both modernism and postmodernism. It is critical because it accepts the postmodern emphasis on the provisional and always contingent or mediated aspect of knowledge, yet realist because it insists upon the objectivity of the world we encounter and so the possibility of more or less truthful ways of talking about the properties of this world ...

... Postfoundationalists agree with foundationalists that our worldviews can have greater or lesser correspondence with reality, including both scientific and theological truth. They agree with antifoundationalists (and nonfoundationalists), though, that the attempt to build a system of knowledge from a base of indubitable, infallible certitude that somehow stands on its own (whether this base is said to be the "plain" words of Scripture or human sensory experiences or something else) is an utterly failed epistemological project well past its sell-by date.

The postfoundationalist picture of knowledge has often been described as a "net" or "web" of truth, The strength and stability of a net does not depend upon any one of its nodes but upon the entire field as a unified whole. [Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), 118-20]

A key point in debates concerning epistmology has been the sticking of foundationalism with modernist versions of foundationalisms, whether of the Cartesian project, the empirical project, or some fusion of the two. In these modernist epistemologies, the ground is to be some indubitable, transcendent timeless truths that form the foundation for building up the edifice of human knowledge. Needless to say, such foundationalisms even at the time of Descartes were not acceptable to the Christian faith. In this sense, Osborn is right to reject "foundationalism." The problem is whether such modernist foundationalism should be affixed to creationism at all. I would say not.

There are two main streams of creationism: the Fundamentalist and Evangelical stream, and the Reformed stream, and two interact with each other. Among Fundamentalists, the focus is on the reading of Scripture in a biblicistic manner, thus "God says it, it is true." There is always a tendency to read one's culture and assumptions into the text, yet to claim it as "foundationalist" in the modern sense is absurd, because the Fundamentalis are mostly not philosophers thinking about "indutible transcendent timeless truth." Their biblicism is a distortion of Sola Scriptura, yet because they are just treating the text naively, they function basically like premoderns in their epistemology rather than modernist foundationalists. Premoderns do not think about "indubitable transcendent truths," so while Fundamentalists are influenced by culture, it is one thing to claim influence by modernity, and another to claim a modernist epistemology. Osborn's accusation of Fundamentalists as "foundationalist" (in the modernist sense) is therefore in error.

Among the Reformed camp, many YECs embrace creation like premoderns too, as a look at the case for YEC in the 2004 OPC Creation Report, and also in the book The Genesis Debate, shows. These essays were primarily appeals to the traditional teaching of the church that believes in 6-24 creation, and thus Osborn's accusation of "foundationalist" also is in error. There is after all a difference between premodern naive realism and the much-maligned "common sense realism," because the latter consciously sticks to common sense readings and reasonings while the former does not.

I doubt there is therefore one epistemology for creationism. There are obviously many of the most vocal creationists who are empirical foundationalists. They are however others who are presuppositionalists, which is another version of Foundationalism. Presuppositionalism, both Vantilian and Clarkian, are different from the mainstream "modernist" foundationalisms. Vantilian foundationalism puts God as the foundation, while Clarkian foundationalism puts Scripture as the foundation. Both of them are "foundationalist" to the extent that the foundation are the basis for all of truth, and both of them are "critical" in the sense that they recognize the situatedness of all truth claims.

The problem with Osborn is that he does not recognize the difference between Reformed versions of foundationalism and the mainstream modern foundationalisms. Thus, he wrongly tars all creationists with the charge of modern Foundationalisms, while failing to recognize the alternate foundationalisms that some creationists hold to.

Do the Jews believe a literal 6-24 creation?

Although some ultra-orthodox Jewish sects have denied the reality of dinosaurs and torn the pages dealing with evolution out of their textbooks, Ira Robinson notes, in general "fundamentalism and creationism have been decried by Orthodox Jews as 'nonsense' and 'a grave error'"; even if Genesis is read in a highly literal manner, the biblical texts in broad Jewish perspective literally do not mean what Christian creationists say they mean. [Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), 107]

Osborn so claims that this belief in a literal creation is particularly and peculiarly a "Fundamentalist" belief, and not a historic belief held to by Jews and Christians. We have seen how Osborn misrepresents John Calvin's position, and now he claims that the Jews also do not hold to this "fundamentalist" 6-24 position. If one thinks that this new claim is also a misrepresentation of the Jews, one is not too far off the mark.

Who speaks for the Jews? If we are to evaluate what the Jews believe, do we inquire into what ancient Jews believed, or what modern Jews believe? Most certainly, what modern Jews believe concerning the creation account is not unimportant, but is it that important for discovering the "Jewish" view, as if there was only one Jewish view concerning creation? If we are to look into what the Jews believe, certainly we should look at what the ancient Jews believed also, for one should not assume some form of historical continuity between ancient Judaism and modern Judaism.

For historical reasons, written works from the ancient world are generally few and not well preserved and transmitted. That said, we have a rather decent look into how the ancient Jews view the history of the world through the pen of the 1st century writer Flavius Josephus. As an educated Pharisee, surely Josephus would be knowledgeable about what the Jews of his time actually believed and well qualified to write on that topic.

In his book The Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus began with the creation of the world, and he treated the Genesis account as actual history (not "Upper Register" history or anything of that nature). Here is an excerpt of what Josephus wrote:

1. (27)In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but when the earth did not come into sight, but was covered with thick darkness, and a wind moved upon its surface, God commanded that there should be light; (28) and when that was made, he considered the whole mass, and separated the light and the darkness; and the name he gave to one was Night, and the other he called Day; and he named the beginning of light and the time of rest, the Evening and the Morning; (29) and this was indeed the first day: but Moses said it was one day,—the cause of which I am able to give even now; but because I have promised to give such reasons for all things in a treatise by itself, I shall put off its exposition till that time. (30) After this, on the second day, he placed the heaven over the whole world, and separated it from the other parts; and he determined it should stand by itself. He also placed a crystalline [firmament] round it, and put it together in a manner agreeable to the earth, and fitted it for giving moisture and rain, and for affording the advantage of dews. (31) On the third day he appointed the dry land to appear, with the sea itself round about it; and on the very same day he made the plants and the seeds to spring out of the earth. On the fourth day he adorned the heaven with the sun, the moon, and the other stars; and appointed them their motions and courses, that the vicissitudes of the seasons might be clearly signified. (32) And on the fifth day he produced the living creatures, both those that swim and those that fly; the former in the sea, the latter in the air: he also sorted them as to society and mixture, for procreation, and that their kinds might increase and multiply. On the sixth day he created the four-footed beasts, and made them male and female: on the same day he also formed man. (33) Accordingly Moses says, That in just six days the world and all that is therein was made; and that the seventh day was a rest, and a release from the labor of such operations;—whence it is that we celebrate a rest from our labors on that day, and call it the Sabbath; which word denotes rest in the Hebrew tongue.

2. (34) Moreover, Moses, after the seventh day was over, begins to talk philosophically; and concerning the formation of man, says thus: That God took dust from the ground, and formed man, and inserted in him a spirit and a soul.b This man was called Adam, which in the Hebrew tongue signifies one that is red, because he was formed out of red earth, compounded together; for of that kind is virgin and true earth. (35) God also presented the living creatures, when he had made them, according to their kinds, both male and female, to Adam, who gave them those names by which they are still called. But when he saw that Adam had no female companion, no society, for there was no such created, and that he wondered at the other animals which were male and female, he laid him asleep, and took away one of his ribs, and out of it formed the woman; (36) whereupon Adam knew her when she was brought to him, and acknowledged that she was made out of himself. Now a woman is called in the Hebrew tongue Issa; but the name of this woman was Eve, which signifies the mother of all living. [Flavius Josephus & W. Whiston, The works of Josephus: Complete and unabridged. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 1.1.1, 1.1.2. Accessed on Logos.]

I think it should be plain without a shadow of a doubt that Josephus believed in a literal 6-24 creation. As a educated Jew of the elite class writing to the Greeks and Romans a history of his people, his views can be taken to be largely representative of what the Jews in the 1st century actually believed.

The Jews in the first century AD therefore believed the same view of creation as the Young-Earth Creationists. According to Osborn, who cites Ira Robinson, the modern Jews disavow Josephus' view of creation. This indicates a shift of views on creation during the last two millennia. Ancient Jews believed a 6-24 creation, while modern Jew mostly rejected it as "nonsense" and "a grave error." The question is which group of Jews Christians should perceive as being of greater consequence for their faith, and the answer should be rather obvious. Ad fontes! Modern Jews have largely fallen away from even the faith of the first century, and thus their rejection of 6-24 creation is irrelevant for Christians today.

Concordism and the Nature of Science

Biblical literalism and modern creationism—what would more accurately be called concordism—are approaches to Genesis that insist, among other other things, on the scientific and historical harmony (or "concord") of the primeval stories (Genesis 1-11) as defined by contemporary notions of scientific and historical objectivity, regardless of the actual weight of scientific and historical evidence. Old Testament scholar Gerhard F. Hasel succinctly describes and defends this approach to the Bible as follows: "whenever biblical information impinges on matters of history, [the] age of the earth, origins, etc., the data observed must be interpreted and reconstructed in view of this superior divine revelation which is supremely embodied in the Bible." [Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), 40]

The problems caused by the Enlightenment continue in the discussion about "concordism." To the extant that historically scientia was considered holistically, I can sympathize with the problems Christians have when they faced the new scientific insights, among those from new disciplines, that come with the dawning of the Modern Age. This idea of a strict holism of knowledge lies behind the idea of reconciling different branches of knowledge, instead of trying to forge a different way of approaching data and hypotheses.

As I have mentioned, the idea of "concordism" should be rejected as being based upon modernist assumptions. The debate over concordism assumes basically two options: Either one tries to correlate the "revelational" aspect with the "historical/scientific" aspect (concordism), or one rejects any such correlation (non-concordism). YEC is taken to be an *extreme* version of concordism, while views like the Framework Hypothesis are most decidedly non-concordist. Behind this dichotomty lies the idea that what is scientific is historical. Therefore, a commitment to a historical account of the Genesis events means that one must correlate the "science" with the "revelation." Conversely, in a non-concordist view like the Framework Hypothesis, the Genesis events are seen as "Upper register" reality, therefore no correlation is necessary, since the details of the events are non-historical even though the creation event(s) itself is historical. But why must I or anyone accept the view that what is historical must be scientific?

Almost since the beginnings of Science, the difference between historical and operational science has been obscured. Charles Lyell was probably the first to apply uniformitarian principles to come up the concept of deep time. And from a certain point of view, the application of such principles seem sound. In a laboratory experiment for example, one assume that the processes going on in the experiment do not behave erratically. The problem lies not so much in the usage of the principle in normal experimentation, but in its unwarranted extension into the unknown, what is called "historical science."

Science broadly speaking is the discovery of the working of things according to equations and universally applicable principles. In operational science, the working of things are described in such a way that knowledge of its activity can be accurately described and maybe even manipulated. In historical science however, science is used as a tool to reconstruct the past. The problem comes about because the past is not repeatable. Furthermore, all assumptions about the past are just that, assumptions. One-time events like a global flood can be hypothesized and tested, but apart from revelation there is nothing that says that one-time events did or did not happen.

The reason why this is the case is because "historical science" deals with history. In history, science is one tool among many, not the only tool. For example, science by itself cannot prove that a man called Napoleon existed, only eye-witness records can. Just a simple thought experiment would suffice. Let's say erosion of 10cm of rock takes a river flowing at a rate of 10km/hr for 100 years, or it could take a swollen flood river at a rate of 100km/hr in a day. How does one know which one actually happened, since the event of the swollen flood river is a catastrophe? According to science, we can't. Uniformitarianism therefore is untenable in all historical science research. Not only can we not discount events that are out of the ordinary, we have no idea what the initial conditions could be. The open system nature of any environment in the past is also a problem for anyone doing historical science research. Lastly, all historical science proceeds on the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent, and therefore it can only yield probable results. Therefore, by its very nature it cannot rule out any other hypotheses that predicts the same results as the data. For all these reasons, historical science research is untenable on its own. Unlike operational science where one can plan an experiment to test alternate theories and thus arrive closer to the truth, there is little one can do to test the past, which is not accessible to us.

The problem therefore with the concordism debate is that both options are wrong. The biblical account is not "scientific," but history; it is eye-witness account of what happened. It does not tell us scientifically what happened, as if science can do that. Science is a tool. It can tell us what possibly might have brought the events stated in the Bible to pass, but it is totally incapable of telling us what exactly happened in history. In other words, science can only tell us the "how," not the "what" of history. Christians therefore do not have to try to reconcile "science" with the Bible, because the evolutionary metanarrative is not science, but a non-scientific metanarrative propped up with plausible scientific theories and facts that supposedly validate it.

Creation, death and curse

The only creature that is altered or "cursed" by Adam's fall is the serpent that was directly responsible for it, though its curse is not becoming a predator but rather being forced to crawl on its belly and "eat" the dust of the ground (Gen. 3:14)— clearly metaphorical and symbolic language not to be taken literally. ... The serpent is singled out from among the animals. [Robert] Alter thus renders the passage, "And the Lord God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, cursed be you of all cattle and all beats of the field.'" To construe this simple statement to mean that God abruptly and supernaturally transformed docile creatures at every level of animal existence—not only in their instincts but also in their physical structures— into ferocious predators (or permitted a satanic being to do the same) is to take no small liberty with the text. Nor is there any mention in Genesis or any other book of the Hebrew Bible of mortality being imposed for the first time upon the non-human animals world as a result of human rebellion [Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), 35]

---

And to Adam he said,

“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

(Gen. 3:17-19)

Osborn questioned the whole idea of death being extrinsic to creation. As I have mentioned earlier, there is a difference between biological death and biblical death. The death that is extrinsic to creation is the death of nepphesh chayyah, not just any death in particular. It is also noted that the verse used by Osborn is not the verse that speaks of the curse on creation, which should be seen not on the curse upon the serpent in verses 14 to 15 but rather the curse on the ground on verse 17 to 19.

According to the Scriptures, the ground is cursed because of Adam, thus it produces thorns and thistles instead of crops. Farming would be a hard work. Yet it is reductionistic to see this as speaking merely of the ground. Rather the "ground" should be seen as a synecdoche for creation in general, such that the curse speaks of creation itself impeding Man's labor and well-being.

The passage that speaks to this can be seen in Romans 8: 20-22 where creation is pictured as groaning until the coming of the Eschaton. We note here that the larger context parallels the creation's groaning with our groaning to be set free from the bondage to sin. We desire to be set free from the body of sin, thus our spirits groan. Likewise therefore, creation is groaning to be free from the curse from sin. Creation itself does not sin, so it cannot be said to groan for deliverance from sin. Yet the parallel indicates that the groaning of creation has something to do with sin, and thus it must speak about the curse upon it due to sin. Genesis 3:17-19 speaks only about the ground being cursed, and therefore the "ground" must function as a synecdoche for all of creation and life in this present age.

Thus far, we have proven that creation itself is cursed as a result of Man's sin. But how is this curse manifested? Is animal death part of the curse? We notice at least that human death must be a consequence of the curse for the simple reason of the sanctions of God's command in Genesis 2:17. Romans 5:12-21 furthermore reinforces the link between human sin and human death. So human death should be seen as a consequence of the Fall. But what about animal death? While there is nothing to indicate that animals are immortal, the fact that they are called nepphesh chayyah seems to indicate a common sharing of life with Man. Death normally comes through predation, disease or old age, or sometimes freak accidents. Disease and freak accidents would be part of the curse on creation, and there wouldn't be predation. As for old age, while this is not definitive, since death is antithetical to life, for a "living creature" to die it must cease to be "living," so it is highly doubtful that old age applies. This is especially so since old age is not a necessity of nature.

And lastly, canivory is not a curse. The idea that God or someone transformed "docile creatures" into "ferocious predators" is a caricature of the YEC position. There is nothing inherently wrong or sinful with ferocity, or even carnivory. Creation is cursed; creation is not guilty and not sinful. Sin adheres to moral agents, and ferocious predators are most definitely not moral agents. The transformation is not immoral and might even be a biological necessity in light of the environment with its scarcity of food. The problem with animal carnivory was never about the supposed immorality about meat-eating, but about the death of the animal eaten. So, if there is an hypothetical "meat" producing tree, or even an animal that once in a while "eject" a bunch of fresh meat from its body, there wouldn't be any problems pre-Fall with eating that meat.

In conclusion, Osborn's rejection of animal death through his interpretation of Genesis 3:14-15 fails. Animal death is wrongly linked to the curse on the serpent, the development of carnivory is misconstrued as sinful, and the wrong question was asked. The question was never about meat-eating, but about the cessation of the life of the living creature.

Creation, redemption and perfection

When we read Deuteronomy 32:4 in its full literary context, for example we find that God's tanim work of creation—his "fashioning" of the children of Israel—is revealed precisely in the long, perilous and conflictive process by which human civilizations evolved and the Israelites were brought out of "an empty howling waste" into a land of their own: ...

If the reading I have offered so far is at all correct and God recruits the creation at each stage to play an active, participatory role in what follows, with Adam being charged with an especially vital task of "subduing" other parts of the earth, then there is a very good theological reason why God declares the creation to be "very good" rather than "perfect." The creation cannot be perfect because, in an important sense, it is not entirely God's work. There are principles of freedom at work in the creation, and animals, humans and the earth itself have a God-given roe to play as his coworkers. [Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), 29-31)

With regards to the problem of the creation being described as "very good" but not "perfect," Osborn has put forward an alternative explanation. Creation itself is not perfect because "animals, humans and the earth itself" has to play their parts as God's "coworkers." I confess I do not know what that means, since humans don't actually create anything ex nihilo (assuming Osborn believes in ex nihilo creation), but let's continue on.

The major flaw in Osborn's understanding is that it confuses between creation, and redemption. Creation and redemption are two separate works of God. The first work culminates in Genesis 2: 1-3, where the first Sabbath is celebrated, a prefigurement of the last eternal Sabbath spoken of in Hebrew 4: 1-9, which is the culmination of the second work of redemption. The first work end with a Sabbath which is literarily without an end, and the second work ends with a Sabbath that is literally without an end. The first Sabbath is typological, the second actual. Both are the capstones of God's works.

In the Westminster Standards, the distinction between the two works of God is upheld. From the Westminster Shorter Catechism (WSC):

Q8. How does God executes his decrees?
A. God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence

Q20. Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?
A. God, having out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.

God executes his decrees in the works of creation and providence (1st work), and then after the Fall, he initiates the work of redemption (2nd work), a work which is not mentioned in WSC Q8. There is a real difference between the two, a distinction and difference which Osborn fails to maintain. If we however maintain that distinction, then it should be clear why God is working now after creation. When God says that His work is complete on Day 7, it means that His work of creation is now complete. After the Fall, God's work of redemption starts, but not His work of creation, which is complete. With regards to the creation of matter ex nihilo, God will not do any such work again, until the Eschaton in the creation of the new heavens and the new earth.

Osborn's proposed solution therefore fails, because he fails to differentiate the two works of God. Does Adam have to "subdue" other parts of creation? Yes, he does, for not all the earth is the paradise of Eden, but that is not creation ex nihilo neither is it to make carnivores herbivores.

Creation as "very good", and creation as "perfect"?

In fact, Mark Whorton writes, nowhere else in Hebrew Scripture is tob or tob me'od interpreted by biblical scholars "as absolute perfection other than Genesis 1:31, and in that case it is for sentimental rather than exegetical reasons." There are other words in biblical Hebrew that are closer to the English sense of "perfect" than tob me'od and that might have been used instead. [Ronald E. Osborn, Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), 29]

Another objection to YEC that has been made is the somewhat peculiar pointing out that the Garden of Eden is not perfect. Now I must confess that I am not so sure why that is supposed to be an objection to YEC, since after all YEC does not maintain that the Garden of Eden is heaven, or some Platonic ideal. If I were to guess, I would say the argument runs as follows:

P1: A place without death or suffering, where animals are vegetarians, is a perfect place.
P2: Heaven is a place without death or suffering, where animals are vegetarians.
C1: Therefore a place without death or suffering, where animals are vegetarians, is heaven.

P3: Eden is not heaven.
C2: Therefore Eden is not a place without death or suffering, where animals are vegetarians.

It is here that we must object immediately to premise 1. Is heaven just a place without death or suffering? Is any place without death or suffering "perfect"? Heaven is indeed a place without death or suffering, where pictorially animals are pictured as vegetarians. But that is not just what heaven is about. An absence of death or suffering is insufficient for perfection. Rather, life positively has to be there, life in its fullness and abundance.

Reformed theology speak about the Covenant of Works being made with Adam in the Garden. In the Covenant of Work, Adam was placed, as it were, on probation. Even though he was created without sin or defect, he was to perform positive obedience in order to merit eternal life. In other words, a blank slate, tabula rasa, is insufficient for heaven. Of course, we know that Adam would fall into sin. The key point I would like to make here however lies in the fact that creation, although it is very good, was not perfect. The absence of death and suffering itself is not perfect. Perfection is not just the absence of death and suffering, but also of the abundance of life. That is why the tree was sacramentally called the Tree of Life. If all that was necessary was not to sin, why then should there be two trees instead of just one? In fact, why should God even put the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden in the first place, tempting, as it were, Adam and Eve to sin?

Creation according to YEC is very good, but not perfect. It is a paradise without death and suffering, yet that is not sufficient for perfection. This particular objection to the YEC scheme might apply to some versions of Fundamentalist YEC, but it does not apply at all to Reformed YEC.

"Ancient cosmology" - The 3-tiered universe?

Philippians 2:6-11 is a beloved passage in Scripture. ... The apostle Paul concludes the hymn in verses 9-11:

Therefore God exalted him [Jesus] to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name
that at the name of Jesus every name should bow
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord.

When singing this hymn, we do not often think about the phrase "under the earth." Yet if we examine the original Greek, it is a translation of katachtoniōn, which is made up of the preposition kata meaning "down" and the noun chthonios referring to the "underworld" or "subterranean world." ... In other words, Paul is referring to an ancient understanding of the structure of the cosmos known as the "3-tier universe"...

... Is the purpose of Philippians 2:6-11 to reveal science and the structure of the universe [3-tier universe]? Most Christians would say no...

... The Greek word katachtoniōnin verse 10 refers to the underworld, and it clearly indicates that Paul accepted the 3-tier universe.

— Denis O. Lamoureux, "No Historical Adam: Evolutionary Creation View," in Matthew Barrett, Ardel B. Caneday (eds.), Four Views on the historical Adam (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013), 47-49

A major point Dr. Lamoureux made against all forms of creationism and against a historical Adam is the issue of "ancient science" and "ancient cosmologies." Since the ancients were clearly not moderns, we need to think of them in terms of their ancient cosmologies. One aspect of ancient cosmologies, so thought, was the model of the 3-tier universe, of which a most bizarre photo is shown, which looks something like this

It is here that Lamoureux makes his argument. From Philippians 2:9-11, he "shows" that Paul affirms this 3-tiered universe, and rhetorically asks if this means that Scripture is lying, since most certainly there is no actual 3-tier universe present today. The obvious answer is no. The ancients use ancient phenomenological language, "ancient science," "ancient cosmology" and "ancient biology" (i.e. animals producing after its kind) which looks true on the surface, but are not actually true. So reading the ancients with this distinction between "message" and "incident" allow us to claim that all the Bible states about cosmology and science are true "on the surface," but might not be true (in fact mostly false) actually.

If one stops the knee-jerk reaction, one can see why this might seem plausible, and how it seems to do some justice to the Bible's claims without sacrificing inerrancy. The main error with Lamoureux's proposed solution comes through a false idea of how the ancients think, which is a failure to let Scripture determine its own cosmology before dealing with the empirical data of the ancients. It is in other words eisegesis, not exegesis, because it allows ANE studies to dictate the context of the Bible instead of using ANE studies as guides to the context of Scripture.

I have previously written on the problems of ANE studies with its Enlightenment ideas. What I want to focus on is this particular assertion of the 3-tiered universe. Lamoureux claims that the 3-tiered universe is most certainly wrong. In response, I would most certainly agree if one means, by the phrase "3-tiered universe," that ridiculous picture of ancient cosmology. However, is that the only way to understand the three tiers of Philippians 2:9-11? Of course not!

Decoupled from such silly pictures, can we hold that there are 3 parts of the universe, namely, (1) heaven, (2) earth, (3) underworld? I should hope so. Christians believe in a heaven, the earth, and hell for starters. Yes, Hades or Sheol is not really hell, but the point is that the biblical testimony shows at least three tiers. In other words, for Lamoureux to be able to claim to remain orthodox, he must hold to the realities of heaven, earth, and hell EVEN today in our modern age. He should not think of them as mere appearances which are actually untrue, the way he takes "ancient cosmology." So why then must we take the biblical data and use it, some of it interpreted in the most literalistic sense, to construct some ridiculous cosmological pictures that the ancients probably might not even own as their own? Lamoureux did place in his sections ancient pictures, but he ruled out a priori any considerations that they are corruptions of the original word-description of the actual creation account passed down faithfully to Moses. Since the creation account is transmitted in the form of words, it is not surprising if the pagan descendants of Noah were wrong in their interpretation of the oral or written account as they drew their pictures.

As I have written, just because something is not scientific does not mean that it is not true. That is the problem with the false dichotomy created by the debate over concordism. A pox on both their houses! All of the "ancient science" and "ancient cosmology" of the Bible are true, if one interprets them correctly, not as interpreted as like some ridiculous so-called "ancient cosmological picture." To Lamoureux's challenge on the 3-tiered universe, I would state that I affirm three tiers in the universe in this modern age, but NOT his false understanding of them.

Ancient Cosmologies and the Enlightenment

In academic circles discussing the ANE (Ancient Near East), there is an emphasis on interpreting the ancients in their contexts. The ancients live in a world of spirits and a world without science, and thus we should not interpret them as dealing with questions of science. Such a concordist view of interpreting ancient cosmologies is anachronistic, it is claimed. Rather, to avoid a confusion of hermeneutical horizons, we must read the ancient records and ancient cosmologies as in the non-scientific, spiritual world of the ancients. This discussion concerning ancient cosmologies of course is pertinent for Christianity, for it likewise relegates the Genesis account as being an ancient cosmology, albeit a true cosmology. Reading the Genesis account in its ANE non-scientific and spiritual hermeneutical context means that the Genesis account is not strictly "literal" in its history. This allows for other views such as the Framework Hypothesis to emerge, since it supposedly does justice to the mytho-poetic elements in the text of Genesis.

The issue here before us is whether this way of reading the ANE is correct. Before we address this question, it would be helpful to see the background of this view of reading the ancients, which comes from the Enlightenment. Now, of course, just because something comes from the Enlightenment is not an indication that is necessarily wrong, or that it is necessarily right. However, it is helpful to see the meta-structure that lies unspoken beneath this reading of the ancients.

The idea of ever forward human progress is a product of the Enlightenment. The human race was becoming better and better. With the flowering of the new humanism came new theories regarding society and the development of society. Society was seen as developing from the idea of the savage hunter gatherers to tribes then towards kingdoms and empires. Broadly speaking, religions meanwhile evolve from the primitive animism to polytheism to monotheism, and finally atheism. This is the understanding which stems from the French Enlightenment with its antipathy towards all forms of organized religion. The idea of evolution and progress was already present way before Charles Darwin applied it to living beings; in other words, Darwin did not invent evolution, just biological evolution. The evolutionary ideas can be seen in the Hegelian dialectic, and the form in which it greatly affects our study is in the school of History of Religions (or in German "Religionsgeschichtlicheschule"). The ancients were seen as generally superstitious and thus ancient cosmologies were seen as nothing more than tribal fairy tales, which we in the modern world know are false.

ANE studies are done with the concepts of History of Religions in the background. Thus, when works such as the Enuma Elish or the Baal Epic or the Gilgamesh Epic are found, they are interpreted accordingly. The description of gods and men are seen as myths, in the sense that they are superstitions which the ancient in their ignorance believed to be true. It is poetic, by which is meant that these are hymns and poetry (which they generally area). Such depiction of the gods are used for polemical purposes against other cultures as well, as when one compares the varying accounts and how different cultures switch the name of the victorious god(s) or goddess(es).

The unchallenged assumption behind the mainstream reading of the ancient cosmologies concern how they think the ancients view these stories. It is commonly assumed that just because these are non-scientific and spiritual therefore the ancients did not in any sense view them as being actually descriptive of what has happened in real history. In other words, stories like Enuma Elish can be said to be the ancient equivalent of the Marvel comics, or the movie Prometheus — fairy tales and fantasy stories made up by superstitious people to make sense of the world. This is also the sense that anything non scientific must be equal to falsehood, as if just because the ancients were non scientific therefore they cannot be describing anything real in actual history. That is why all of them are just collectively labeled as "myths," a nice patronizing way of saying that the ancients were superstitious idiots but we want to think that we are treating what they say seriously. After all, we all know a priori that Marduk, Tiamat and Ea were mere figments of the wild imaginations of the ancients. We just nod our heads, smile at the stories, and say that we now as modern men and women know better.

This however should not be the way we view the ancients. Yes, the ancients were non scientific. That does not mean that they weren't trying to describe or convey what they thought were real history. The conflict of the gods could well be a case of different tribes stating that the same god or gods were favoring them, and the other side has fallen from true worship. Here is where the problem with interpreting ancient cosmologies come in. Too many people it seems accept the Enlightenment premise(s) as a given. But why should we do so? Upon what basis can we claim that non scientific people cannot be describing or recounting what they thought was real history, even in a poetic form? It is almost like that option is not even considered in discussion of ancient cosmologies. The debate over concordism for example puts forward two options: an anachronistic pseudo-scientific reading of the text, or a mytho-poetic reading of the text. But there is a third option: a non-scientific communication of what the ancients thought was real history.

In light of all these, my question is: Why is this third option never explored? It seems strange that within evangelical and Reformed circles, no one has ever explored this option. Why is that so?