Scribbling Theology:

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    • Human

      Posted at 10:22 pm by scribblingtheology, on November 7, 2019

      “The man here tells us a truth that is awful – we baptise ourselves with names that are far from the only truth about ourselves.”
      ― Pádraig Ó Tuama, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World

      One of life’s biggest question’s is who are we? What does it mean to be human? What is our purpose in life? What is the meaning to all of this? Essential questions, unfortunately, not quickly answered.

      The Scriptures tell a story about us that starts on the first few pages of this ancient book. Humanity is made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26), from the dust of the ground, from the breath of God’s nostrils (Genesis 2:7), and from one another (Genesis 2:22). Humans were created to be like God and relate to Him by ruling over God’s creation. They were created with a connection to the earth as they were to cultivate and protect it (Genesis 2:15). Finally, they were created from one another as it is not good for anyone to be alone (Genesis 2:18). In Genesis 3, we became something less than human as we failed to be like God, and we allowed the serpent to rule over us. We became less than human as we failed to protect the Garden from evil. Then, we failed in our relationship with one another as we immediately turned to blame one another for our mistakes.

      At the Fall, something happened to humanity where we lost our identity. We don’t know who we are anymore, we don’t really understand what we’re meant to be doing because of that loss of self. So in an attempt to recover our lost sense of self, we grab anything that seems to offer an answer to the big question “who are we?” A lot of us, at least in the West, have bought into the modern cultural meta-narratives of capitalism, scientism, gender equality, and probably dozens of ideas I can’t really think of right now. Why? Because even those these in and of themselves aren’t bad, these things help us make sense of who we are yet never really give us the complete picture. Each little story or philosophical idea makes us feel safe for just a fleeting moment. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much science discovers, whether we find peace in the Middle East or if climate change is solved tomorrow, we’d still end up feeling sense of restlessness and loss of who we’re truly meant to be.

      The Bible tells us that because we’re incapable of being human ourselves, God has to send someone who can fix that problem for us. Jesus is the perfect human. He was truly human in that He was completely like God (Colossians 1:15) He ruled over the serpent and evil (Matthew 4:1-11). He loved God and others as Himself (Matthew 22:36-40), even His enemies (Matthew 5:44). So as we’re united to Christ by His Spirit, we start to recover a real sense of who we’re all meant to be (I’m thinking the beatitudes here as an example). It’s only in Jesus that we truly begin our journey on becoming truly human, which will culminate in glory.

       

      Posted in Scribbles | 0 Comments | Tagged Christianity, Identity, love, opinion, Spirituality, The bible, Theology
    • Life and Death: Genesis 1-11 Part III

      Posted at 1:00 pm by scribblingtheology, on September 2, 2019

      Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic. – W. H. Auden

      Quick note: I’ve skipped a few sections in this series, but I felt compelled to write about this sooner rather than later. So like Starwars, some of these posts will be out of order. Thanks 🙂

      There is nothing more sobering than the death of a loved one. When someone dies, it is the perfect time to deeply reflect on the value of life, purpose and destiny. Why does death exist? Why do we all have to die? After we die, then what? Important questions and the answer largely depends on what you believe about humanity, God and the Bible. It’s taken me a while to write this post because I’m constantly challenged on my perspective of death. Growing up, death was a reasonably foreign idea. I had a cat that died, but apart from that, I didn’t really have any relationship with it. It probably wasn’t until my dad died just a few years ago that the reality of death kicked in.

      In the Bible, the first place we come across the idea of death is in Genesis 2:15-17. Here God has placed mankind in Eden to work and keep it. Then God tells them that they could eat from any tree in the Garden except the tree of knowledge of good evil; otherwise, they’ll die. What an odd story. Eat fruit from any tree except this one, or you’ll die? Is the fruit poisoned? Does God really like this one particular tree? Are they allergic to its fruit? What’s going on here? A careful reflection on the story might lead one to consider that there’s more going on here than meets the eye. First, there are two main trees in the Garden here (Gen 2:9). The tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Don’t eat from one, but you can from the other. In the story, these trees were representative of important and more profound realities. Wisdom/knowledge and eternal life. Let’s focus on the tree of life for a moment.

      In the ancient near eastern world, these kinds of trees are associated with youth and the reversal of age. In the Gilgamesh Epic, there is a plant called “old man becomes young” that grows at the bottom of the cosmic river. In the rest of the Bible, the tree of life is portrayed as offering life and new life (Prov 3:16-18; 15-4), and can also be found in Revelation (2:7; 22:1-2, 14-15, 18-19) where the tree of life and the river of life are associated. For me, this sheds a bit of light on the meaning of what’s going on here in Genesis. A new creation is happening in Revelation. Renewal of the earth and the removal of sin and corruption where creation is finally united to God in the complete sense of that phrase. In Genesis 2, something similar is happening, unity, flourishing and absence of sin.

      Furthermore, the mention of rivers in Genesis 2 flowing out from the Garden coupled with the tree of life says to me that this is where all life and goodness comes from, this Garden, this sacred space. Except for one crucial difference. In Revelation, there is no tree of knowledge, there is no presence of sin.

      Now for the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The name given to the tree is counter-intuitive. Knowledge is good, right? Isn’t gaining the ability to discern between good and evil something we should have? Obviously, something more is at play in the story. First, it’s important to note that the Hebrew word for evil here is different from the way we use it today. Western philosophy is loaded with a certain ethical definition that isn’t necessarily in the original Hebrew word. It’s probably better to understand the word evil as bad or not good for you. For example, the word can also be used of things God does (Jdg 9:56-57; 2 Sam 12:11; Isa 45:7). However, we know that God is good and that in Him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5), so the word doesn’t always have to have the same philosophical definition that we have for it. I suppose my point is; this tree represents knowledge to distinguish between what’s bad for us and what’s good for us in the world. We call this wisdom. Essentially, eating from the tree meant choosing to live by our own wisdom (this is the definition Genesis 3 gives for defining to be like a god), rather than living by Yahweh’s wisdom. Let’s just stop for a moment. It’s not like Adam and Eve didn’t know what the right thing to do was. They certainly believed that they were going to die if they ate the fruit from the tree. It wasn’t until the serpent tempted them that they decided to become gods themselves.

      So now to death. God said, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17). The thing is Adam and Eve don’t die when they ate the fruit, at least not in the conventional sense. Adam lived until he was 930 years old. He had a long full life, longer than ours. So then death needs to be understood as something more than simply not existing. First, the plain meaning of death here does incorporate physical death. Adam might live until 930 years old, but he does end up dying, and I believe that’s something that’s not apart of God’s good creation (Gen 3:19; Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 15:55). However, the kind of death emphasised here is a relational separation from God who is the source of all light and life (Gen 2:7; Job 33:4; Neh 9:6; John 1:3-4; 1 Tim 6:13). Like I argue in my post on Genesis 1, Moses’ audience and the later Exilic audience would have understood Genesis 2-3 as their current experience, being separated from the land, sacred space, and God’s presence as a result of human rebellion.

      To conclude, death is two-fold.  It is separation from God’s presence and the ceasing of one’s physical existence. One inevitably leads to the other. Because Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden (God’s presence), so was all of humanity in Adam. Because the inevitable consequence of rebellion and separation is physical death, all shall die. But there is good news. God makes all things (including death) work together for the good of those who love Him, according to His purposes (Rom 8:28). Though we all may die, those who turn to Christ will actually find their life (Matt 10:39, 16:25; Mark 8:35; John 11:25-26), and will take part in His resurrection (John 6:39; Rom 6; 1 Cor 6:14, 15:20-23; 1 Thess 4:16; Rev 21:1-5). We’re all exiles now (1 Peter 1:1-2), but one day, those who have bowed the knee to Christ and given Him their allegiance will be raised up on the last day and rule alongside Him in a New Heaven and a New Earth in perfect harmony with God, one another, and creation. So let’s choose to eat from the tree of life (God’s wisdom), rather than choosing to decide what’s good for us. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), and it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God indeed (Heb 10:31).

      Posted in Scribbling Scripture | 0 Comments | Tagged Christianity, opinion, Spirituality, The bible, Theology
    • Genesis 1-11 Part II: In the Beginning

      Posted at 7:36 am by scribblingtheology, on August 16, 2019

      In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. – Genesis 1:1-2

      A long time ago before I became a Christian, I remember dating a girl who’s family were hardcore believers. I remember one day being at their house, bored, and picking up a Creation magazine. Two things stuck out to me. First, that the earth was around 6000-10,000 years old and second that they didn’t believe aliens existed. Immediately I knew they were crazy. However, it wasn’t long until I thought these things myself. When I became a Christian, I hit the ground running with the Scriptures. I soaked up everything it had to say and just believed what I thought it was telling me. For most of my Christian life, I believed that God created the earth around 6000 years ago, that there was a real talking snake in the Garden, and that ideas like evolution were a lie cleverly constructed to deceive the world into believing that God doesn’t exist. I was taught by many people (people who are still dear friends today) that unless you believed these things you weren’t taking Jesus, the Bible or the Faith seriously. So I joined their tribe. I often went street preaching, seeking to debunk evolution and turn people to Jesus. For me, atheism and evolution went hand in hand, and if you could disprove one, the other would fall. Sure, I had heard about Christians out there who believed in evolution (they’re known as theistic evolutionists). However, they were considered liberal, twisting the Scriptures, compromising and it probably wasn’t long until they walked away from the Faith altogether. Since then, a lot has changed. Bible college set me on a trajectory of seriously studying the Scriptures in its original context and genre. I remember quite clearly that the first theological position that shifted was my eschatology. I went from being a Premillenail Dispensationalist to a Convenential Amillinealist. The next thing that started to change was my approach to the Scripture itself. I went from reading Bible verses in isolation from one another to seeing huge thematic threads that reverberated throughout the entire Biblical narrative (I came to know this as biblical theology).

      I began to understand the importance of context, genre, audience, authorship and to look for the authors intent (much of which I discuss here). Huge biblical themes like temple and sacred space, priesthood, union with God and much more, lit up the Bible as it began to sing to me a sweet alluring song that I haven’t been able to get out of my head to this day (not that I’ve tried). Eventually, I came across Tim Mackie and the Bible Project. They kept pointing out how important the story of Genesis 1-11 was for the entire biblical narrative, and wow was I amazed. Coupled with what I was learning at college, these guys turned the Bible from Netflix into 4k VR surround sound where, at times, it was almost like I could touch God Himself through the very pages I was reading. Now, as a result of all this, over the last three years or so I’ve shifted in my view of Genesis 1. Let’s explore.

      Genesis 1 has been the subject of much speculation and debate for thousands of years. Each generation or era has a different take on what’s happening in the text, and I actually don’t think that’s a horrible thing. I believe God intends for us to reflect on whatever it is we’re reading in the Bible into our own context and live out the implications as God’s people. However, this shouldn’t be at the expense of the original intended meaning of the text. As far as I can tell, I see three main theological themes being explored in the first chapter. 1. God and who He is. 2. The ordering or construction of sacred space. 3. The establishing of humanity and their vocation in relation to God, sacred space, and the created order.

      When we turn to the first page in the Bible, the very first thing the author wants us to notice is that there is a god and that this god created the heavens and the earth. Who is this god? This is where context is so important. If Moses wrote Genesis (I discuss authorship in a previous post), then his cognitive environment would have shaped his understanding of who this god was. For Moses and the Israelites in the Exodus events, the same God who brought them out of Egpyt was the same God who was the Creator in Genesis 1. This can be further supported by the use of the title “LORD God” in Genesis 2:4 (and onwards) where the author seems to be making an emphatic claim that this is indeed Yahweh Himself. The God of Israel is the God of the entire cosmos.

      Just this line of thought alone has some profound implication for its readers. The most obvious is that God doesn’t merely create the universe, order it, and leave it to its own devices (deism). Instead, if this god is Yahweh Himself, we see that He is always at work throughout human history. God is both transcendent and immanent. He is distinct from His creation but is at work in it and often through it to bring about the redemption of a fallen world. The New Testament later picks this up by throwing Jesus into the mix (see: John 1 and Col 1:15-17).

      Furthermore, in a polytheistic world, the idea that one God created the cosmos would have been a little edgy. In the ancient near eastern world (ANE), there were many other creation narratives, each depicting a council of gods creating the cosmos, usually chaotically, through violence and battle. Instead, God here simply speaks, and there is light, stars, animals etc. Very chill. To me, this says something about God’s character. Rather than having chaos reign, God is all about order, peace, shalom. In fact, this can be further supported by the use of the word create. This leads me to my next point. Order out of chaos and sacred space.

      Here is where I blend a few ideas together. First, we read that the earth was formless and void. The Hebrew wording here can be translated as wild and waste, desolate and chaotic. Picture, if you can, a tumultuous watery wasteland that continuously churns and destroys. This was the state of the world before day one. Immediately the readers would have picked up on what was happening here. In the surrounding ANE world, there were plenty of creation narratives where chaotic and wild waters were to be overcome by the gods. It’s where the great leviathan dwelt, chaotic and dark sea creatures at odds with the plans of the gods (see the Enûma Eliš as an example). To the ANE world, dark, chaotic waters and leviathan were something to be feared, yet in the text, God simply brings order out of this chaos by speaking, unlike the ANE gods that wared over it. Furthermore, the leviathan was made to be a good creature, not an evil one in Genesis 1:20-23 (c.f. Ps 104:26). Similarities? Yes. Absolutely. It goes without saying that we’re going to find similarities between people groups in the same cognitive environment.

      The differences, however, are important. Instead of God having to fight or war for lordship over the chaos and darkness, He is lord from the very beginning. The chaos creatures are actually His, and so are the waters. They’re subdued and ready to be moulded in the hands of the Creator. From here, God takes the wild watery wastes and uses them to form His sacred space – temple.

      John Walton in his book “The Lost World of Genesis 1” argues that the Hebrew word for “created” in Genesis 1:1 shouldn’t be understood as ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), rather it should be understood that God orders the cosmos into a cosmic temple (sacred space). I recommend you read his book and wrap your head around the full argument. From what I’ve learned from him and other resources I concur. The ANE world was more concerned with function and order then they were about the material origins we’d usually read into the text. One analogy Walton uses is the difference between a house and a home. The way we usually read the text is like building a house. We place down the foundations, the walls, roof etc. Where the ANE was more interested in a home with furniture, food etc. A home is where one thrives, lives and flourishes, the other is more about material origins. This is likely what’s happening in the text. The author is more interested in function and home in the sacred space God is about to order, rather than the material origins of the universe. In this blog, I explore the theme of temple and how it relates to the biblical story. In the next post, we’ll explore more about the theme of temple and how it relates to what’s happening here.

      So to wrap up this part of the series:

      1. The god in Genesis 1 is Yahweh. He is the sole creator, sustainer and Lord of life.
      2. The earth was in a wild, dark and chaotic space then God starts to order it.
      3. God is arranging a sacred space or temple.
      Posted in Scribbling Scripture | 1 Comment | Tagged Christianity, God, Jesus, opinion, The bible, Theology
    • Genesis 1-11 Part I: Authorship, Context and Genre

      Posted at 5:12 pm by scribblingtheology, on August 10, 2019

      It really all began in Bible college. I took intro to the Old Testament and intro to the New Testament in my first year. Naturally, in the first semester of our OT class, we began to comb through the Torah. But in my NT class, surprisingly, we spent more time in the OT and then in the intertestamental period then I was expecting. For a while, I was a bit confused. I didn’t want to spend time in Genesis 1-3 or Exodus, let’s just talk about Jesus and the Gospels.  However, as time went on, I began to realise how important it was to understand that the New Testament is really just the culmination, fulfilment, and climax of everything the Old Testament was working towards. Essentially, the New Testament makes the most sense only in light of the Old Testament in the same way that the Avengers: End Game only makes sense in light of all the prequels. Thus, my love for the Bible truly started to evolve. I was now beginning to see that the Bible wasn’t just a collection of random independent books with neat little stories that we can enjoy or live by. Instead, it is (as the Bible Project says), a unified story that leads to Jesus. Eventually, it was Tim Mackie and the Bible Project that went even further in showing me the importance of the Old Testament story, mainly, the role Genesis 1-11 plays. In fact, I’ve developed a love so much for Genesis 1-11 that if I ever were to go into scholarship, it would have to be related to this section of Scripture. Until then, I must sate my curiosity with blogging about it.

      Genesis 1-11 is one of the most vital sections in all of Scripture. In it contains the theological mythos of the world, the introduction of God, and the purpose of humanity. Every other story in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament can find its source in these eleven chapters. Before jumping in, however, we must consider two things first. Context and genre.

      When you study any section of the Bible, three questions must come to mind. 1. Who is the author, and who is the intended audience? 2. What is the context of this verse or passage (canonical and historical)? 3. What is the literary genre (historical, narrative, poetry, apocalyptic, wisdom, epistle)? These questions can help us to conclude the authors intent of the passage and how and what the original audience would have received. Answering these questions doesn’t necessarily guarantee an accurate interpretation of Scripture, but it does get as a long way towards that goal. Let’s take a super easy one, for example. The book of Romans. We know the author (the Apostle Paul), the audience (Christians, perhaps both Gentiles and Jews in Rome), the date of the letter (A.D. 55-57), and the genre (epistle). Now, the theological purpose of the letter is somewhat debated. However, these facts give us a fair understanding of what Paul would have been writing about, why he wrote them, his possible influences and meanings of contended passages. Because Romans genre is epistle, we’re going to find less symbolism and poetry and more of a style that conveys a precise sense, theology, and purpose to his readers. We can do the same work with the book of Genesis, albeit with more ambiguous results.

      First, Genesis is one part of a larger collection of books or scrolls as they would have been in the ancient world. We know this collection as the Torah or Pentateuch; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Authorship is a bit tricky. Unlike Paul’s epistles where he actually tells his audience that it’s him writing it (or at least had a scribe he dictated to), Genesis doesn’t actually tell us who wrote it. Furthermore, many books in the OT didn’t necessarily have an author per se. This is because, in the ancient OT world, the ability to write and preserve information was scarce (they were reserved for royal and priestly offices). Tradition speculates that Moses was the author of Genesis and with good reason. The Torah is often attributed to Moses throughout the rest of the Hebrew Bible (Josh 1:7-8; 2 Chron 25:4; Neh 13:1). The New Testament and Jesus Himself seem to attribute the Torah and Genesis to Moses as well (Matt 19:7, 22:24; Mk 12:26; John 1:17, 5:46, 1:23). Whether or not they believed Moses literally penned every word or not is fairly debatable, but what we can say is that Moses had a major hand in its origins and content. This now leads us to context.

      If Genesis originates with Moses, then his cognitive environment would have had an impact on the composition of the text. The entire Exodus story and Israel’s journey going into the Promised Land would have been drawing on the Genesis 1-3 story of God giving land (Eden) to Adam and Eve, with the test in Genesis 3 mirroring God testing Israel in the wilderness and a lot more we’ll explore in further posts. However, this is only the first cognitive environment we need to consider.

      The final form of Genesis (and the Torah) that we have wasn’t shaped and put together until sometime after the Exile. This further complicates our mission to determine its context as there is a world of difference between the events of Genesis, the Exodus story and the exilic or post-exilic period. These different worlds can have vastly profound impacts on how Genesis is to be understood. This is because as people living in or just out of the Exile, they would have interpreted Genesis in light of that event. Genesis 3, for example, is about living in the land (Eden) and being exiled from it because of sin. Isreal living in the Exile would have immediately picked that up and read that as their own story.

      Furthermore, the ancient near east (ANE) was the world of the Old Testament. This means that what the ANE believed would have impacted how the authors of the Old Testament thought and wrote. Therefore, what the ANE world thought of temples, gods, relationships, family, and the cosmos would have influenced the culture of the OT. In turn, this would affect the authors perspective on certain issues (this is called one’s “cognitive environment”). Abraham himself was brought out of a pagan ANE world to start a unique family and people for God’s own purposes. Not everything Abraham did would be considered righteous or holy. Let’s not forget that Abraham was on a constant struggle to shed ANE cultural norms and expectations and live according to the promises of God. So then, what I’m ultimately arguing here is that God deliberately used each and every author’s cognitive environment as a means to shape His message.

      So then, the book of Genesis as we know it today passed through Moses and was preserved by oral tradition until finally formed in or sometime after the Exile. Genesis could then be considered (especially chapter 12-50 – even the entire Torah) as Israel’s origins. Chapters 1-11 could be regarded as the origins of the whole world. So broadly speaking Genesis’ genre is historical. However, how we study history in the 21st Century and how the ancient world preserved history was different. I would categorise Genesis 1-11 as mythological theological history. What I don’t mean by this is that Genesis 1-11 didn’t happen. Instead, the primary point of these chapters is the divine truths the author is presenting. Mythological doesn’t mean fiction in this context. The mythological genre can be better understood as parabolic or allegorical. The events in Genesis 1-11 happened. However, the events recounted in the narrative bring out a theological point rather than a detailed account of the past. As Tremper Longman III says, “The book of Genesis is not a history-like story but rather a story-like history.”

      So to wrap up Part I:

      1. Authorship: Genesis’ origins were likely with Moses but its final form as we know it was put together sometime during or after the Babylonian Exile.
      2. Context: The ANE world, the time of Moses, and the Exilic period do have a considerable impact on how one should understand the text (something more we’ll get into the next post).
      3. Genre: I believe the genre of Genesis 1-11 should be understood as mythological theological, historical narrative. It is an account of the history of the world, but a theological one told literarily through the use of story.

      In the next part of this series, we will start by looking at Genesis 1.

      Resources:

      • The NIV Application Commentary Genesis by John H. Walton
      • Genesis (The Expositors Bible Commentary): by John Sailhammer
      • The Dictionary of the Pentateuch (IVP) eds. T. Desmond Alexander and David W. Baker
      • Genesis (The Story of God Bible Commentary) by Temper Longman III
      • This video by the Bible Project
      Posted in Scribbling Scripture | 3 Comments | Tagged Christianity, opinion, Spirituality, The bible, Theology
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