Yet Another Creation Candidate. Just wanted to wrap up some loose ends on this multi-part posting, (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 here) which I've discovered, could go on forever as it plows through Genesis. So in no particular order, here is some glue for the fray.

RTB, DI, and CRI

We said that the three standard "creationist" views were like three sides of a triangle. We wanted YACC to be in the middle, drawing from each. Accordingly, we've attempted to show how scientific progress can be made without the straitjacket of scientific materialism, that science can discover purpose and intent, which is the point of DI. Actually, science always shows purpose, it takes great skill to dance around "apparent" purpose and avoid its childlike logic. (I just love those moaning scientists who say there is an inborn tendency in babies to see purpose, which has to be beaten out of them to make them good scientists. Ahhh, so your purpose beats their purpose? Rousseau would be proud.)

So that was the easy part. But what about RTB's attempt to take Astronomy and astronomical time scales seriously? Well, not only has YACC bought into billions of years of creation, but it does RTB one better by finding in Genesis 1:1-2 a description of that galactic creation. YACC also takes a more consistent chronological view by temporally and spatially separating Genesis 1 from chapter 2. If anything, RTB is too hidebound in its adherence to traditional "day-age" expositions for YACC.

Well, after that overly exuberant defense of RTB, certainly there is nothing left for ICR to acknowledge much less admire, yet YACC claims to be a literalist hermeneutic, eschewing the "flexibility" of day-age or mythical interpretations of Genesis. How can this be?

YACC claims that the understanding of any Hebrew word, such as "yom" and especially "eretz" and "shamayim", rest not on the usage in Semitic literature, not on the usage in the rest of the Bible, but in the mind of God. For if it requires compiling statistics on usage, then we are attributing meaning to some sort of scientific, Aristotelean categorization of word meanings, which is prone to all the errors of Humean induction, of temporal uncertainty as language evolves, and of the analytic ambiguity Wittgenstein called "language games".

But if the word exists in the mind of God, because language is the meaning of the Trinity, because language is itself a gift of God, because it is the closest thing to a perfect transmission of God's thoughts to us, then all ambiguity rests in God, not in us. And therefore the first use of the word is the defining moment, the flash of light illuminating the world, creating the universe;  for the first words in Genesis, if they are what they say they are, have become the Rosetta stone of science, the meaning and the content and the reality all rolled into one. We hold in our hand not just the Hebrew "eretz", but the foundation stone of our feet. We see not just the black ink splashed against the page, but the resounding echo of that first word still faintly shining between the stars. If we want to know what that word means, then by all means let us gather together the witnesses: the prophets, the priests, the poets who used it, and the stars who reflect it and sang. Our hermeneutic cannot afford to neglect a single witness, lest it neglect us and exclude us from inclusion in the greatest work of the Creator. For any theory, any hermeneutic that does not contain itself, is not a philosophy of heaven, but of hell.

This then is the fundamental problem with YEC solutions that exclude science, for they exclude most of the witnesses that tell them the meaning of the words. This is the fundamental problem with all Gnosticism, that it excludes all the crucial witnesses to the Resurrection. This is the fundamental problem with nominalism, the belief that God is completely unconstrained in what he can do and what he can mean, for it excludes all the real witnesses to the meaning of language, divorcing words from their reality.

As an example, Morris and YEC like to argue for nominalism, that God can do whatever He wants, such as create man and name the animals in 12 hours. When Science announces that this is contrary to the observed long delay between various animals and humans appearing on the earth, Morris argues that God can create the world to look old, since he can do anything. That is, Morris is saying that no matter how sophisticated a tool science uses, it will still "appear" consistently old. I imagine this as a translucent wall at 4000BC, that is invisible to science, and everything "in the looking glass" only appears to be old. Now because God is able to do anything, this wall could be at 5000BC, or 3000BC, we are free to move the wall anywhere we want, with no effect on science. In fact, we can move it to 1200BC and have Moses be telling us a story of Adam who only appeared to have lived before Moses, or we could move it to 33 AD in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus prayed "take this cup from me". For if God can do anything he wants, he can make the past "as if Christ had suffered", without actually requiring Christ to suffer. Jesus could have avoided death entirely, if God can do anything he wants.

And so you see, the wall can't be moved at will, even at God's will. There are things that even God cannot do, such as avoid death on the Cross. And if facts matter, if death matters, if the suffering of Christ, which he endured, which he suffered willingly for our sakes, if it matters, then God has forsworn "making things look old". For to be old, is to be finite, to decay, to be imperfect, to require the perfection of suffering, and if he could not remove that for his Son, why would he remove it for Henry Morris?

Eden Anthropologically

Only in passing did we allude to the impact of Eden for anthropology, but I wanted to emphasize this point separately. Eden and Genesis tell us about man, how he is made, what he is made for. Evolution is not just a theory of origins, it is a myth about purpose, or more precisely, the lack of purpose. Through that myth Darwin assures us that our purpose in life is procreation: for this purpose we have evolved, and for that end we are doomed.  And if the creation account had stopped with Genesis 1, I would find myself in reluctant agreement with Darwin.

For after all, this was the first blessing, the first command God gave mankind: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. A rip-roaring debate over at Baylyblog was inspired by simple question: is marriage meant for children? (And you thought theology was boring!) As I said, if one stops with Genesis 1, then I would agree with Tim Bayly. But God gives us Genesis 2. And  in Genesis 2, after giving Adam language and after fulfilling his first task using this gift by naming the animals, Adam is given a talking helper, made from a rib, and Adam names her, Eve. Then Genesis 2:23 tells, "For this reason...", for what reason? For the purpose of naming, of sharing, of communicating, "for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife..."

Now there are many purposes, many causes, many questions one can answer with a reason. Aristotle gave four basic categories of purpose: material, efficient, formal, and final. All of them are involved in this concrete conclusion. The material cause is a rib, "flesh of my flesh" says Adam. The efficient cause is God who fashioned her from a rib. The formal cause is woman, the glory of man's desiring. And the final cause is communication, like that of the Trinity itself, for it was YHWH Elohim, "the LORD God", literally "Jehovah Gods" in the plural, who said "it was not good for man to be alone". In making woman, God made man in his own image, in the image of the eternally communicating Trinity, three yet one, "and the two shall become one flesh".

So No, Tim Bayly, children are not the purpose of marriage. They are the blessing of the body, they are the command of chapter 1, but marriage is about more than body, it is about the Trinity, about the image of God, about the miracle of language of chapter 2. One can have a childless marriage, but one cannot have a silent marriage, a dumb marriage, a marriage without spiritual consummation.

And so we see the anthropology of Genesis, that man was designed for language, for communication, for Trinitarian completeness. Darwin would have us all return to chapter 1, to the animals, to the blessings of fruitful multiplication, but God calls us to chapter 2, to the Trinity, to the spiritual unity found in communion with him.

The Fall

And when we see the purpose of chapter 2, then the sin of chapter 3 comes into sharp focus. Some have argued that everything bad began in chapter 3: cancer, death, and the meat-eating habits of tigers. But none of these rely on that special property of Adam, on language. It seems not just likely but certain that saber-toothed tigers did not eat grass, that Tyrannosaurus Rex was not Red Riding Hood's grandma. And while I sympathize with the desire to blame the serpent for all manner of evil and venture capitalists, such views willfully ignore the witness of creation itself. It is highly disrespectful of God himself to beat and abuse his messengers for bringing unwelcome news. Such behavior cannot be tolerated, for one day he promised us, he will not just send a messenger, but his own Son.

But what we are certain of in chapter 3, is that the communication between the Trinity of Adam, Eve and God, was severely broken by the Fall. And that like language itself, this brokenness tenaciously follows man down the generations, down the centuries, closer than his breath.  The cure for this pernicious disease lies in the divine Word, whose application lies in the preaching of the Word--not the seeing, not the eating, not the smelling--but in the preaching and the hearing. Just as Adam's first task was naming, so the last task of our final breath will be the naming of the Name.

There are many evils that have entered the world since the Fall, and many that have been named and left, but the evil that will never be conquered even should we discover the elixir of life and become like Methuselah, is the separation of man from God. From that flaw, all others flow, and from its repair, flows eternal life.