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- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Genesis is a book of orgins--the orgin of the universe, the origin of life and the origin of man. It places man in his cosmic setting, shows his particular uniquness, explains his wonder and his flaw, and begins to trace the flow of human history through space and time.Many today, however, view this book as a collection of myths, useful for understanding the Hebrew mind, perhaps, but vertainly not a record of what really happened. Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer challenges that view and shows how the first eleven chapters of Genesis stand as a solid, space-time basis for answering the tough questions posed by modern man.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009
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Genesis in Space and Time
To all those who have made it possible topublish these ten related books in the past five years.I especially want to say thank you to James Sireof the United States and David Winter of Britainwithout whose understanding editorial workon my manuscripts this would not have been possible.
contents
preface
The battle for a Christian understanding of the world is being waged on several fronts. Not the least of these is biblical study in general, and especially the question of how the opening chapters of the Bible are to be read. Modern writers commenting on the book of Genesis tend to treat the first eleven chapters as something other than history. For some this material is simply a Jewish myth, having no more historical validity for modern man than the Epic of Gilgamesh or the stories of Zeus. For others it forms a pre-scientific vision that no one who respects the results of scholarship can accept. Still others find the story symbolic but no more. Some accept the early chapters of Genesis as revelation in regard to an upper-story, religious truth, but allow any sense of truth in regard to history and the cosmos (science) to be lost.
How should these early chapters of Genesis be read? Are they historical and if so what value does their historicity have? In dealing with these questions, I wish to point out the tremendous value Genesis 1–11 has for modern man. In some ways these chapters are the most important ones in the Bible, for they put man in his cosmic setting and show him his peculiar uniqueness. They explain man’s wonder and yet his flaw. Without a proper understanding of these chapters we have no answer to the problems of metaphysics, morals or epistemology, and furthermore, the work of Christ becomes one more upper-story “religious” answer.
Although I have often made deliberate changes, I have used the King James Version throughout the book. Occasionally, where the American Standard Version (ASV) is helpful, I have quoted from it.
I would like to thank Professor Elmer Smick, a friend of many years, who read the manuscript and offered helpful suggestions. Any errors are certainly my own.
chapter 1
creation
The subject of this book is the flow of biblical history. The focal passage of Scripture is the first major section of Genesis (chapters 1–11) which traces the course of events from the creation of the universe to the calling forth of Abraham and the beginning of the history of Israel.
One of the hymns of Israel, Psalm 136, forms an excellent backdrop against which to see the unfolding of biblical history. It sets the conception of God as Creator in proper relation to man as creature and worshipper.
O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good:
for his mercy endureth for ever.
O give thanks unto the God of gods:
for his mercy endureth for ever.
O give thanks to the Lord of lords:
for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him who alone doeth great wonders:
for his mercy endureth for ever. (w. 1-4)
Psalm 136 thus begins with a three-fold doxology and then lists various reasons why we can praise God and why we are called upon to give thanks for his goodness. It is interesting that after giving a general reason for praise (that he “alone doeth great wonders”) the psalmist directs our attention first to God’s creative acts:
To him that by wisdom made the heavens:
for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that stretched out the earth above the waters:
for his mercy endureth for ever.
To him that made great lights:
for his mercy endureth for ever:
The sun to rule by day:
for his mercy endureth for ever:
The moon and stars to rule by night:
for his mercy endureth for ever. (vv. 5-9)
But immediately after expressing and developing the fact of God as Creator, the psalmist sweeps on to a second reason for praising God–the way God acted in history when the Jewish nation was captive in Egypt.
To him that smote Egypt in their first born:
for his mercy endureth for ever:
And brought out Israel from among them:
for his mercy endureth for ever: . . . (vv. 10-11)
The psalmist goes on to talk about the exodus, the dividing of the Red Sea, the overthrow of Pharaoh and the capture of the land of Canaan (vv. 12-21).
Then he turns to praise God for the way God is acting at the particular moment of space-time history in which this psalm was written:
Even an heritage unto Israel his servant:
for his mercy endureth for ever.
Who remembered us in our low estate:
for his mercy endureth for ever:
And hath redeemed us from our enemies:
for his mercy endureth for ever.
Who giveth food to all flesh:
for his mercy endureth for ever. (vv. 22-25)
Finally in the last verse, the psalmist writes in such a way that he speaks even for us at our own point in history and incites us to call upon God and praise him:
O give thanks unto the God of heaven:
for his mercy endureth for ever. (v. 26)
So Psalm 136 brings us face to face with the biblical concept of creation as a fact of space-time history, for we find here a complete parallel between creation and other points of history: the space-timeness of history at the time of the Jewish captivity in Egypt, of the particular time in which the psalm itself was written and of our own time as we read the psalm today. The mentality of the whole Scripture, not just of this one psalm, is that creation is as historically real as the history of the Jews and our own present moment of time. Both the Old and the New Testaments deliberately root themselves back into the early chapters of Genesis, insisting that they are a record of historical events. What is the hermeneutical principle involved here? Surely the Bible itself gives it: The early chapters of Genesis are to be viewed completely as history -just as much so, let us say, as records concerning Abraham, David, Solomon or Jesus Christ.
In the Beginning
The opening verse of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and the remainder of chapter 1 brings us immediately into a world of space and time. Space and time are like warp and woof. Their interwoven relationship is history. Thus the opening sentence of Genesis and the structure of what follows emphasize that we are dealing here with history just as much as if we talked about ourselves at this moment at a particular point of time in a particular geographic place.
In saying this, of course, we are considering the Jewish concept of truth. Many people today think that the Jewish concept is rather close to the modern one–that truth is irrational. But this is not the case. In fact, when we examine the Greek concept of truth in relationship to the Jewish concept, we find this difference. Many of the Greek philosophers saw truth as the expression of a nicely-balanced metaphysical system, rather like a mobile. That is, as long as the system balanced, it could be left alone and considered true. The Jewish concept is the opposite of this. First, it is completely opposite from the modern concept of truth because it is concerned with that which is open to discussion, open to rationality, and is not just an existential leap. Here it is like the Greek notion. And yet, it differs from and is deeper than the Greek concept because it is rooted in that which is historical. For example, we find Moses insisting, “You saw! You heard!” In Deuteronomy 4 and 5, just before he died, Moses reminded the Jews who stood before him that when they were young they themselves had seen and heard what had occurred at Sinai, that is, in space-time history. Their parents had died in the wilderness, but they, the children, had seen and heard in history. Joshua spoke the same way a bit later in Joshua 23:3 ff. As a matter of fact we have an exact parallel in these and other Old Testament passages to John’s explanation of why he wrote the Gospel of John. “And many other space-time proofs [that is what the idea is here] truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:30-31).
As we deal with the Jewish writings in the Bible and with the book of Genesis in particular, we must not understand it solely in Greek terms nor, certainly, in terms of an existential leap. Instead, we have an insistence upon history, truth that is rooted in space and time.
Before the Beginning
Although Genesis begins, “In the beginning,” that does not mean that there was not anything before that. In John 17:24, Jesus prays to God the Father, saying, “Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.” Jesus says that God the Father loved him prior to the creation of all else. And in John 17:5 Jesus asks the Father to glorify him, Jesus himself, “with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”
There is, therefore, something that reaches back into eternity–back before the phrase “in the beginning.” Christ existed, and he had glory with the Father, and he was loved by the Father before “in the beginning.” In Ephesians 1:4 we read, “. . . he [God] hath chosen us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world. . . .” Thus, before “in the beginning” something other than a static situation existed. A choice was made and that choice shows forth thought and will. We were chosen in him before the creation of the world. The same thing is emphasized in 1 Peter 1:20, where the sacrificial death of Jesus is said to have been “foreordained before the foundation of the world.” Likewise Titus 1:2 says that God promised eternal life “before the world began.”
This is very striking. How can a promise be made before the world began? To whom could it be made? The Scripture speaks of a promise made by the Father to the Son or to the Holy Spirit because, after all, at this particular point of sequence there was no one else to make the promise to.
Finally, the same point is made in 2 Timothy 1:9, where we read about God, “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.”
We are faced, therefore, with a very interesting question: When did history begin? If one is thinking with the modern concept of the space-time continuum, then it is quite obvious that time and history did not exist before “in the beginning.” But if we are thinking of history in contrast to an eternal, philosophic other or in contrast to a static eternal, then history began before Genesis 1:1.
We must choose our words carefully here, of course. How shall we talk about the situation before “in the beginning”? To avoid confusion, I have chosen the word sequence, in contrast to the word time as used in the concept of the space-time continuum. It will remind us that something was there before “in the beginning” and that it was more than a static eternal.
After creation, God worked into time and communicated knowledge to man who was in time. And since he did this, it is quite obvious that it is not the same to God before creation and after creation. The Scripture pictures this before “in the beginning” as something that can be stated. While we cannot exhaust the meaning of what is involved, we can know it truly. It is a reasonable concept, one that we can discuss.
This subject is not merely theoretical. What is involved is the reality of the personal God in all eternity in contrast to the philosophic other or impersonal everything which is frequently the twentieth-century theologian’s concept of God. What is involved is the reality of the personal God in contrast to a theoretical unmoved mover, or man’s purely subjective thought protection. There is more here than contentless, religious truth achieved through some sort of existential leap. Consequently, when we read, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” we are not left with something hung in a vacuum: Something existed before creation and that something was personal and not static; the Father loved the Son; there was a plan; there was communication; and promises were made prior to the creation of the heavens and the earth.
This whole conception is rooted in the reality of the Trinity. Without the Trinity, Christianity would not have the answers that modern man needs. As I have said elsewhere, Jean Paul Sartre well pointed out the basic philosophic problem that faces us: the fact that something–rather than nothing–is there. This is the incontestable and irreducible minimum for beginning to move as a man. I cannot say nothing is there; it is quite plain that something is there. Furthermore, it is also clear that this something that is there has two parts. I am there and something in contrast to myself is there.
This leads us, of course, to the modern notion of Being. Being is there. But the question immediately arises: “Has it always been there?”1 This is modern man’s basic mystery.
Man is shut up to relatively few answers. I think we often fail to understand that the deeper we go into study at this point, the simpler the alternatives become. In almost any profound question, the number of final possibilities is very few indeed. Here there are four: (1) Once there was absolutely nothing and now there is something, (2) Everything began with an impersonal something, (3) Everything began with a personal something, and (4) There is and always has been a dualism.
The first of these, that once there was absolutely nothing and now there is something, has, as far as I know, never been seriously propounded by anyone, and the reason for this is clear. For this explanation to be true, nothing must really be nothing–totally nothing–neither mass nor motion nor energy nor personality. Think, for example, of a circle that contains everything there is and there is nothing in the circle, then remove the circle. This is the concept of absolute nothing. As I say, I know no one who has propounded the concept that all that now is has come out of such absolute nothing.
The fourth notion, that of an eternal dualism, can be dealt with rather quickly because it has never stood under close analysis, for men naturally press on behind the dualism and its particulars toward a unity by which to comprehend the duality. This is true whether it is the dualism of electromagnetism and gravity, or some shadowy Tao behind Yin and Yang. Parallel dualisms (for example, ideas or ideals and matter, or brain and mind) either tend to stress one at the expense of the other or leave the unsatisfied question of how they march on together with no reason for doing so.
In contrast to this, the impersonal beginning, the notion that everything began with an impersonal something, is the consensus of the Western world in the twentieth century. It is also the consensus of almost all Eastern thinking. Eventually, if we go back far enough, we come to an impersonal source. It is the view of scientism, or what I have called elsewhere modern modern science, and is embodied in the notion of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. And it is also the concept of much modern theology if one presses it back far enough.
An impersonal beginning, however, raises two overwhelming problems which neither the East nor modern man has come anywhere near solving. First, there is no real explanation for the fact that the external world not only exists but has a specific form. Despite its frequent attempt to reduce the concept of the personal to the area of chemical or psychological conditioning, scientific study demonstrates that the universe has an express form. One can go from particulars to a greater unity, from the lesser laws to more and more general laws or super-laws. In other words, as I look at the Being which is the external universe, it is obviously not just a handful of pebbles thrown out there. What is there has form. If we assert the existence of the impersonal as the beginning of the universe, we simply have no explanation for this kind of situation.
Second, and more important, if we begin with an impersonal universe, there is no explanation of personality. In a very real sense the question of questions for all generations–but overwhelmingly so for modern man–is “Who am I?” For when I look at the “I” that is me and then look around to those who face me and are also men, one thing is immediately obvious: Man has a mannishness. You find it wherever you find man–not only in the men who live today, but in the artifacts of history. The assumption of an impersonal beginning can never adequately explain the personal beings we see around us, and when men try to explain man on the basis of an original impersonal, man soon disappears.2
In short, an impersonal beginning explains neither the form of the universe nor the personality of man. Hence it gives no basis for understanding human relationships, building just societies or engaging in any kind of cultural effort. It’s not just the man in the university who needs to understand these questions. The farmer, the peasant, anyone at all who moves and thinks needs to know. That is, as I look and see that something is there, I need to know what to do with it. The impersonal answer at any level and at any place at any time of history does not explain these two basic factors–the universe and its form, and the mannishness of man. And this is so whether it is expressed in the religious terms of pantheism or modern scientific terms.
But the Judeo-Christian tradition begins with the opposite answer. And it is upon this that our whole Western culture has been built. The universe had a personal beginning–a personal beginning on the high order of the Trinity. That is, before “in the beginning” the personal was already there. Love and thought and communication existed prior to the creation of the heavens and the earth.
Modern man is deeply plagued by the question “Where do love and communication come from?” Many artists who pour themselves out in their paintings, who paint bleak messages on canvas, many singers, many poets and dramatists are expressing the blackness of the fact that while everything hangs upon love and communication, they don’t know where these come from and they don’t know what they mean.
The biblical answer is quite otherwise: Something was there before creation. God was there; love and communication were there; and therefore, prior even to Genesis 1:1, love and communication are intrinsic to what always has been.
The Trinity
If we press on in a slightly different way, we can see even more of the nature of the God who existed prior to creation. In Genesis 1:26 we read: “And God said, Let us make man in our image. . . .” As we have seen in the New Testament, God the Father not only loved the Son but made a promise to him. And so we should not be taken by surprise when we read the phrase Let us or the phrase in Genesis 3:22, “the man is become as one of us.” This same phrase also occurs in Isaiah 6:8: “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”3
The teaching that the Trinity was already there in the beginning is especially emphasized in John 1:1-3. As a matter of fact, the concept has particular force because it picks up the first phrase of Genesis and makes it, it seems to me, into a technical term: “In the beginning already was [the Greek imperfect here is better translated already was than was] the Word and the Word already was with God and the Word already was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” Then in the third verse the Greek aorist tense4 is used in contrast to the imperfects that preceded it: “All things were made [became] by him. . . .” Thus we find first a statement that the Word already was, but then in sharp contrast to this we find something new was brought into being “in the beginning” when he who already was there made what now is.
Furthermore, we know who the personality called the Word (Logos) is; verses 14-15 make it plain: “And the Word was [became] flesh, and dwelt among us. . ., [and] John [John the Baptist] bare witness of him. . . .” Of course, the one John bare witness to is Jesus Christ.
Here too there is a contrast between the imperfect and the aorist in the Greek. The one who already was [the imperfect tense] the Word in the beginning and who had a part in creating all things, became [aorist tense] flesh. I believe that John, the writer of the Gospel, deliberately made such a distinction. That is, in the “beginning” this Word already was, but subsequent to this and in contrast to it there were two absolute beginnings: The first occurred when all things were made (became), and the second when the Word became flesh. Thus, the absolute beginning of the creation and the absolute beginning of the incarnation stand in contrast to the always wasness of the Logos. In John 1:1 this is related to the term, “in the beginning.” I think, therefore, that “in the beginning” is a technical term meaning “in the beginning of all that was created,” in contrast to the pre-existence of the non-static personal-infinite, Triune God, who did the creating out of nothing.
The phrase “in the beginning” is repeated in Hebrews 1:10, and, as in John 1:1-3, it emphasizes the fact that Christ was already there before creation and was active in creation. That same idea is repeated, though not the phrase itself, in Colossians 1:16-17, because there we are told that “by him were all things created.” Furthermore, 1 Corinthians 8:6 contains an interesting parallel: “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and for whom we exist; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist by him.” Paul sets forth a parallel between the Father creating and the Son creating.
Thus we have considerable detail concerning the specific relation of the Trinity to the act of creation. It is true, of course, that the part of the Holy Spirit in creation is not as clear as that of the Father and the Son, but it seems to me that Genesis 1:2 does make his presence known: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” I realize that there is some question about how the phrase “Spirit of God” should be understood here, but certainly the Bible, the Old and New Testaments together, makes a point of saying that the Trinity was there and that the Father and the Son took part in the process of creating.
I would repeat, therefore, that Genesis 1:1 does not depict an absolute beginning with nothing before it. God was there–and then came creation.
The historic Christian position concerning Genesis 1:1 is the only one which can be substantiated, the only one which is fair and adequate to the whole thrust of Scripture. “In the beginning” is a technical term stating the fact that at this particular point of sequence there is a creation ex nihilo–a creation out of nothing. All that is, except for God himself who already has been, now comes into existence. Before this there was a personal existence–love and communication, Prior to the material universe (whether we think of it as mass or energy), prior to the creation of all else, there is love and communication. This means that love and communication are intrinsic. And hence, when modern man screams for love and communication (as he so frequently does), Christians have an answer: There is value to love and value to communication because it is rooted into what intrinsically always has been.
The Root of the Biblical Doxology
There is a phrase in the book of Jeremiah that Christians should engrave upon their hearts: “The portion of Jacob is not like them [the idols made by men]: for he is the former of all things” (Jer. 10:16). This is the root of the biblical doxology–“unto him”–not it! God is not like those idols made of wood and stone, nor is he like those gods that are merely the extension of men’s minds. He is the personal God who was there as the former of all things. He is our portion, and he was before all else.
What a sharp contrast to the new theology! The problem in the new theology is to know whether God is there at all. The new theologians are saying the word God but never knowing whether there is anyone back of the word and therefore not being able to pray. As Paul Tillich once said in Santa Barbara, “No, I do not pray, but I meditate.” The Christian, however, not only says that God is really there but that he was there, that he always has been there, and that he is “my portion” now.
Revelation 4:11 contains a great doxology to this One. Unfortunately, the King James translation does not give its full force. The first phrase should read: “Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God.” This reminds us of Jeremiah’s phrase, “He is our portion.” He is our Lord and our God. Then the verse continues: “Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power: for thou didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created” (ASV). The New English Bible correctly translates it in modern terms: “By thy will they were created, and have their being!” This is the Christian cosmogony.
Here is an answer for modern man overwhelmed by the problem of being, by knowing that something is there and yet not being able to understand it: Everything which has being, except God himself, rests upon the fact that God willed and brought it into creation. With this I understand why being is there and why it has form, and I understand that particular part of being which I myself am and the mannishness (personality) that I find in me. Things fall into place, not through a leap in the dark, but through that which makes good sense and can be discussed. Once and for all, God did create the being of the external world and man’s existence. They are not God and they are not an extension of God, but they exist because of an act of the will of that which is personal and which existed prior to their being.
How contrary this is to today’s whole drift both in the theological and in the secular world as it rolls and drifts and speaks of the intrinsically impersonal! And how distinct from any form of intrinsic dualism! Rather, this is the biblical answer to the twentieth-century dilemma.
Often in a discussion someone will say, “Didn’t God, then, if he is personal and if he loves, need an object for his love? Didn’t he have to
