Mike Bull’s comment is an example of why I have come to consider the modern creationist movement a perversion of the classic Christian tradition on creation.  Even though I’m very sympathetic to their desire to read the Bible in as straightforward a way as possible.

Peter’s short essay contains many of the kind of themes and concerns that one can find in most great classic treatments of the doctrine of humanity that have been written over the last two millennia.  To give just two examples, neither Athanasius in Against the Pagans nor Calvin in Book 1, chapter 15 of the Institutes spend time on the issues Mike Bull thinks are essential.

One couldn’t work out, from those two expositions of the Bible’s teaching on what it mean to be human, where the authors stood on the right way to interpret Genesis 1-3.  And this is much the same as Peter Jensen’s article. 

So, either Mike Bull is saying that any exposition of the Bible on humanity that doesn’t explicitly mention a literalistic reading of Gen 1-3 is “fundamentally flawed”.  Or he’s saying that because he doesn’t agree with the author of this article on how to read Gen 1-3 then everything the author says is “fundamentally flawed” even when what he is saying is in full agreement with classic Christian theology and never mentions the issue of creationism at all.

Either way, it is an example of how the concern over creationism threatens to distort any sense of perspective in receiving the Bible’s teaching as a whole.

We can see a similar effect here:

we were once less than human and developed humanity through a process of struggle, death and suffering.

According to Gen 2:7 ‘we’ were once less than human and ‘developed’ humanity through a process.  Because we were once dirt and God fashioned us and breathed life into our nostrils.

This occurred after the world came into existence, as a distinct act of God who is Lord over his world.  That is even the most literalistic reading of Gen 1-3 has most of the components that Mike Bull labels ‘unbelief’ - us being made human from something not human, and it being a process.  And both accounts (theistic evolution and a literalistic reading of Gen 1-2) see the creation of humanity as the work of God who exercised his rule over his world. 

If the issue is simply the position that animals died before humanity sinned, then that might be worth a discussion some day. But I would politely suggest that that issue has little to do with what the Bible has to about what it means to be human - which is the subject of the post.

That’s fine Mike.  As I said, I’m very sympathetic to the concern to read the Bible straightforwardly, and with a minimum of complex ‘glosses’.

I take your allusion about my way of arguing having the potential to be a kind of a ‘sophist’ with the concern that I’m sure was intended.

But seeing you’ve mentioned the wisdom that comes out of the lips of the babes in your sunday school twice now, I think I’d want to suggest that the Bible doesn’t really encourage us to turn to children for our understanding of Scripture.  Rather they are meant to turn to us.  The younger is to be taught by the older.  Children cannot be elders.

So if your students reflect back to you your own views about how to read Gen 1-3, that probably just means that the student, when fully taught, is like their teacher. 

Children aren’t a source of authority that we can appeal to quickly settle disagreements and so bypass going back to Scripture.  An accusation that people you disagree with are guilty of unbelief about Scripture might carry more weight if you didn’t contradict Scripture by setting up children as judges of doctrine.

I’m glad you’re teaching children in Sunday School.  That is a noble work.  I just wouldn’t see them as reliable guides to the knowledge of God, or of how to read and obey his Word. 

in Christ,
Mark Baddeley