Thursday, March 25, 2010

Matthew 2: 11

Matthew 2: 11 The Magi’s Gifts

So, here I pick up where I left off, in the second chapter of the first gospel. I am going to look at only one verse today, the presentation of the Magi’s gifts.

The Wise Men find the baby Jesus with his mother Mary and fall down and worship. This would prove one of the most powerful images in Christianity: worshipping at the feet of the Mother and Child. Of course, it specifically says “his” feet. They weren’t worshipping - or venerating - Mary, but if you visualize this scene, the mother and her baby, the magi falling down in adoration, its easy to see how such an idea could gain such a grip on people’s imaginations and hearts. We’ll talk more about Mary when we get to the Gospel of Luke, which tells the story from her perspective. Matthew focuses on Joseph’s and its interesting that he isn’t mentioned here.

The idea that there were three Magi stems from the fact that there were three gifts. We don’t know how many Wise Men there were. One early tradition says there were twelve. Twelve Tribes, Twelve Apostles, Twelve Magi. Their gifts were gold, frankincense, and myrrh. The latter two are made from resins and were a valued part of the Arabian spice trade. Frankincense was used in the incense that burned before the Lord on the Altar of Incense, first in the Tabernacle and then in the Temple, and myrrh was used in the embalming of the dead. The three gifts, then, speak of the baby’s future: the gold representing authority or lordship, the frankincense representing divinity or worship, and the myrrh the Redeemer or Christ.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

The Lost World Of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate

By John H. Walton

Published by IVP Academic, 2009

One of the biggest hot button issues in religion is the creationism v. evolution debate. Exactly how did God create the universe and everything in it, and what does the first chapter of Genesis tell us? Professor John H. Walton, of Wheaton College, offers a new perspective in The Lost World of Genesis One, one aimed at reconciling a conservative Christian position on scripture with the reality of modern science.

He does this by asking how the text of Genesis chapter one would have been understood - not through the eyes of scientists or theologians - but by someone living at the time it was written. His conclusion, which he goes to great lengths to explain, is that it would have been read as a description of God establishing the functions of the world and not an account of its material creation: “people in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of having a function within an ordered cosmos.” (p. 26) (Very) briefly, the world began without functions, it was without form and void, then the first three days established functions and the second three days installed those functions. Day one established day and night, periods of light and dark, day two established the sky and seas, creating a roof (firmament) to keep out the cosmic sea, and day three the dry land and vegetation. On day four the first day’s functions were installed, the sun and the moon and the stars, for signs, seasons, days, and years; on day five the skies and oceans were filled with life; and on day six the land was filled with animals, and mankind. On the seventh day God rested. Walton sees the seventh day of creation as pivotal. It does not simply mean that God stopped what he was doing. Rather, when the Genesis account was written people understood that the place a god rested in was his temple. It represented the place of a god’s authority. Genesis one, then describes God’s dominion over every aspect of creation and His continued dominion over all the Earth.

Walton takes time to address many concerns associated with this debate, including whether God created ex nihilo, the state of the world in verse two, and to compare his argument to the many alternatives that are being put forward. He addresses the first concern by looking at the Hebrew word bara, to create. This verb is used many times in the Old Testament and always in reference to God. Must it mean to create, materially, from nothing (ex nihilo)? Walton can find nothing to substantiate that position, though he is quick to point out that he, like others challenging the (so-called) Creationist view, believes that God did indeed create the materials of the universe as well as the functions. It’s a question of how. His point here is that Genesis one isn’t meant to be an account of the formation of those materials. I thought it interesting that he doesn’t actually refer to the original proof text for the teaching that God created the world, ex nihilo, II Maccabees 7:28 (KJV):
I beseech thee, my son, look upon the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein, and consider that God made them of things that were not; and so was mankind made likewise.
In the Vulgate, the Latin translation, “of things that were not” was translated simply “from nothing,” or ex nihilo. I think its ironic, given the anti-Catholic sentiments of so many of the fundamentalist advocating creationism, that this important doctrine’s only explicit scriptural support comes from a Catholic translation of an Apocryphal book. Yes, I know that the teaching was advocated by Jewish commentators, but that’s not scripture. And I know that others scriptures can be referenced (John 1:3, Hebrews 11:3, etc), but they only teach that God made the universe and made it from things other than those which appear now. The first point isn’t being disputed by any one, the second, arguably, supports the idea of creation as a process.

The second verse of Genesis one says that the world was “without form and void.” Its an important point for Walton because it describes a world without function. Some Creationists argue for what they call the “gap theory”: that there is a period between the first verse and the rest of the chapter, when Satan, cast from Heaven, destroyed creation. The idea is that God would never has created a formless, empty, less than perfect world. Walton simply states that the Hebrew doesn’t support such a reading, but I would go further and say that proponents of such a reading ignore their own demand for a “literal” understanding of the scriptures and are interjecting their own views of God into the chapter. The Bible says that God created the Heavens and the Earth and that the Earth was without form and void, and then began the process of creation.

Lastly, Walton argues that his position offers various strengths over a variety of others and here I read with some skepticism. Not because I doubted him, but because I think the proponents of those views are all too often so deeply committed to them that they will read this book looking only to find fault and to criticize. They have their position and I think Walton is naïve if he thinks a well reasoned, scripturally valid argument is enough to sway them. The audience for this book is people like myself, who believe in the Bible and in science. Who are looking for interpretations that of scripture that honour it as the Word of God, without forcing the believer to choose between faith or reason. Since coming into Pentecost almost three decades ago I have been consistently faced with a variety of Creationist accounts, all back up by pseudo-science, and have long chosen to just ignore the subject altogether. But why should I skim through the first chapter of Genesis because others find the billions of years of creation so upsetting? While my experience leads me to believe that many will never give this book a fair hearing, I also believe that there are many like me who are looking for something just like this book. We are Walton’s audience.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Religion And Education

There is an interesting article in the March 6 issue of New Scientist, Where do atheists come from? Apparently the idea that education spreads atheism, that the more educated you are the less likely you are to be religious, simply isn't true. This doesn't really surprise me, but it doesn't seem to sit well with many of those making comments with the online version of the article. Not that they argue the point. Rather, they ignore it and just reiterate their own position.

From the article:
The 2005 results show that while there is a clear positive correlation between education and lack of belief in God, the effect is slightly weaker, not stronger, among those with a university education (14.8 per cent were non-believers) compared with those whose highest attainment was secondary level (17.2 per cent).
And
Looking at white British people, for example, the findings show that only around 25 per cent of men aged between 25 and 34 claiming "no religion" have degrees, compared with around 40 per cent of those describing themselves as religious. For women in the same age group, the difference is less marked but the trend is the same.

You will need a subscription to read the article.

Monday, March 08, 2010

500 Christians Murdered In Nigeria

From Times Online:

On the dusty streets of three Christian villages in northern Nigeria, dozens of bodies lined the streets yesterday. Other victims of the weekend’s Muslim fury jammed a local morgue, the limbs of slaughtered children tangled in a grotesque mess.

One toddler appeared fixed in the protective but hopeless embrace of an older child, possibly his brother. Another had been scalped. Most had severed hands and feet.

Officials estimate that 500 people were massacred in night-time raids by rampaging Muslim gangs near the city of Jos, where the Christian-Muslim fault line cuts across Nigeria...
More.