Dr. Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center

Imagine that you are hiking through a great forest, and lose your way.  A storm sets in.  You’re relieved to see a hut in a clearing.  A light shines from the window, and smoke curls from the chimney.  You practically run to the door, hoping to find shelter there.

You knock.  No answer.

You call.  No voice replies.

You go to the window to look in.  What a relief!  The hut is occupied.  There is a fire burning, which warms the stew bubbling merrily in a kettle.  The table is set for supper, and a freshly baked pie sits in the center.

What do you know about this setting, using scientific observation?  You know that someone lives in this hut, even though no one is home at the moment.

Someone had to have built the fire, put water in the kettle, set the table, and baked the pie.  From the state of things, you gather that the person will come back soon to eat the supper he’s prepared.  You are not alone in the forest.[1]

“God.”  He is introduced in the first verse of the Hebrew Bible.  There is no argument.  There is no evidence.  There is no justification.  There is no defense.  Genesis begins with what theologians call a “presupposition.”  Everyone begins with belief.  We all assume something to be true.  Our belief then interprets our world.  Philosophers would refer to Genesis 1:1 as a statement of ontology.  Ontology considers origins.  Beginning to think about reality, existence, and being is a deep, deep well!  But Genesis makes a simple statement: “God is.  Everything else follows.”

Just look around.  Everything that is, is dependent upon One who already Is.  Order-necessary to every thought and action, to living day-to-day existence, to authorities that give boundaries to our lives-comes from Outside of us.   Logic-upon which lawyers depend to make a case, teachers employ to create their lessons, and everyone uses to get from one place to another-is given by Another.  Energy-which powers our solar system, our industries, and our bodies-is impossible to define apart from One who made it.  Postulates-which are claims for truth in math that form the basis for all numbers, equations, proofs-must be grounded in Reality separate from this world.  The Hebraic-Christian faith is best described by Francis Schaeffer: “The truth of Christianity is that it is true to what is there.[2]”

We assume ideas that run our lives, normally, without thought.  But we reflect on other concerns that trouble us every day.  Let me consider just two basic ideas that are established in Genesis 1:1: (1) Morality.  How do I know what is right and wrong?  (2) Meaning. Does my life have purpose?  Answers to these and other essential questions are found in this first statement of Genesis.

(1) Morality. “Who are you to tell me what to do?!”  The exclamation asserted by many today gets to the heart of the issue: is there a law outside myself?  “In the beginning” suggests that human history had a start.  There is another assumption here: Someone gave something its commencement.  If there is an eternal God, He sets the standards for all things.  Earthly ethics have their foundation in Heavenly standards.  The origin of anything dictates the ethics of everything.

(2) Meaning. “If there is no God, anything is permissible.”[3] The claim gives an alternative to right and wrong: if life is meaningless can I do whatever I want?  “God created” suggests that humans are responsible to Deity.  There is another assumption here: Someone gave rules for everything.  If The Eternal Personal Triune God exists, there is a response to the exclamation “There has got to be more to life than this!”

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists.  A baby feels hunger: well, there is food.  A duckling wants to swim: there is water.  If I find in myself a desire which no experience can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.  If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it…probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.[4]

Meaningful satisfaction in this life is hard to come by.  Perhaps “mystery is an embarrassment to the modern mind”[5] comes closest to our understanding.  Using words like “infinite,” “mystery,” and “wonder,” Maria Spiropulu, a University of Chicago experimental physicist, says,

Our view of things has changed tremendously in the last five years.  We are being totally surprised by what we observe in nature . . . something unknown that exerted a great gravitational force was keeping galaxies bound together . . . Scientists call it dark matter.  We can measure its presence but we can’t see or feel it . . . [it is] invisible . . . [string theory] could explain all the particles and forces we see…We don’t know whether it really works yet.  But it has this wonderful feature of unifying everything.[6]

Unity “assures the wise person that the universe is comprehensible, and thus encourages a search for its secrets.  Furthermore, creation supplies the principle of order that holds together the cosmic, political, and social fabric of the universe.”[7] Order, logic, energy, postulates, meaning, and morality exist because God Is.  We are no longer lost in the forest if Someone is at home in the universe.

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[1] Adapted from Susan Schaeffer Macaulay. 1982. How to Be Your Own Selfish Pig. (Chariot): 34-35.  The story is one of many told by Susan’s father Francis whose ability to connect true Truth to life continues to resonate with hearers.

[2] Francis Schaeffer. 1972. He is There and He is Not Silent. (Tyndale): 17.

[3] The quote a belief espoused by Ivan Karamazov in the early chapters of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov .

[4] C. S. Lewis. 1943, 1952. Mere Christianity. (Reprint, MacMillan): 136.

[5] Flannery O’Connor. 1957, 1969. Mystery and Manners. (Reprint, Farrar, Straus, Giroux): 124.

[6] Ronald Kotulak, “Seriously Weird Science,” Chicago Tribune Magazine, 11 January 04, pp. 12-16, 27.

[7] James L. Crenshaw. 1995. Urgent Advice and Probing Questions: Collected Writings on Old Testament Wisdom. (Mercer University Press):126.

Dr. Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center 

Elaine and I met at the International Institute for Christian Studies (IICS) this summer in Kansas City.  She regaled me with dinner-time-travel-stories which included her emeritus philosophy professor husband Jim.  Some years ago they went to Siberia for a semester with IICS.  Elaine’s eyes welled with tears as she told lovely tales of the Russian people who hungered to know about The Creator of the universe.  One lady wondered if God was there, because she was told by the Communists that no God existed.  “Why tell someone something does not exist?  Perhaps this is another Marxist lie,” she reasoned.  Visiting American Christians led her to the Faith on a visit to her village.  Then there was an old woman who had believed in Jesus based only on a few scraps of the New Testament.  Given a Bible for the first time by Elaine, the Russian pressed the book against her chest so hard it left an imprint.  She testified, “I have lived many years but this is the most important possession of my life.”  Elaine’s stories deserve to be written.  

His last entry read like a spy-thriller.  In his accounting, Jim was miraculously spared physical harm in one of his many speaking trips to the former Soviet Union.  My adopted Dad, Jim Braley, has begun to write stories of his past.  Jim’s life is full of experiences: stories which have been told and retold but need the promotion of pen to paper.  Fifty years a school headmaster, educational leader, and worldwide Christian school speaker, Jim’s life is chuck full of interesting tales.  Personal histories must be filed for the future. 

Dan and Kathy Vaillancourt, along with my daughter Chelsea, have been hard at work cataloguing personal lives of Americans. The Vaillancourts’ vision stands in the long line of histories and historiographers who help us to understand the past.[1]  Many cultural historians will owe them a great debt for the dedication to and creation of memoirs.  As George Eliot wrote in Middlemarch,  

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric [unrecorded] acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.[2] 

Personal accounting honors unknown people, their untold tales, and the unappreciated impact on our world.  Historical story leaves a heritage, a standard of belief and practice. 

But Hatshepsut, the famed female king of Egypt, was unsure of her own legacy.  One of the great rulers of the mighty African nation, the “She-King” left her stone chiseled inscriptions all over Egypt.  Even with her one-of-a-kind access to histories’ longest lasting, rock hard memories, Hatshepsut worried she would be forgotten. 

Now my heart turns this way and that, as I think what the people will say.  Those who see my monuments in years to come and who shall speak of what I have done.[3]  

What will people say about us?  We can establish our history in words, but will anyone care?  Who will believe us?  Will our memories be only regarded as opinion, fog evaporated in the morning sun of another’s point of view?  Is Daniel Boorstin’s concern correct when he questions “the bias of survival?”   Are historical points of view fashioned by only those who had the time, opportunity, or inclination to establish their perspective?[4]  And has the quest for scientific truth usurped the proper role of discovering historical truth?[5]  Ultimately, if we question the reliability of ancient sources is there any hope of securing authentic authorities from the past? 

Should Moses’ words be reinterpreted as just one more perception of truth?  Karen Armstrong believes so.  Armstrong says Genesis is non-factual.  With “no pretensions to historical accuracy” the first book in the Hebrew Bible is simply “an early form of psychology” dispensing “an inner source of strength . . . with serenity.”  The cosmology (the study of origins) of Genesis “was primarily therapeutic” providing consolation “to a displaced people.”[6] 

Is it historically honest to reinterpret Genesis as therapy?  No.  Genesis makes Truth claims unlike non-historical myths.[7]  It is not academically fair to evaluate a document based on one’s personal assumptions without examining the evidence.  Genesis should either be rejected, if it is historically unreliable, or taken at face value without therapeutic reinterpretation.  Writing establishes Truth and attacks falsehood.[8]  Truth is more than proposition or story.  Truth is or Truth is not.  No area of human knowledge is neutral.  Historical Truth is tied to reality, establishes identity, and forms the bridge to ethics.  Jesus’ simple statement draws a line in the sand: 

If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.  But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?[9]  

“Soon I will die and all those who knew me; it will be as if I never existed,” laments Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie About Schmidt.  It is then that Schmidt discovers that he has lived Eliot’s “hidden life” because of “unhistoric acts”-those events whose importance is unrecorded in books.  Israel’s powerful neighbors said little or nothing about the Hebrews’ “unvisited tombs.”  Seemingly insignificant in the throes of international heavyweights, Israel’s historiography was ignored in recorded human history.  But like the stories from Elaine, Jim, Dan, Kathy, and Chelsea, the First Testament account of Genesis provides “the growing good of the world.”  Our personal histories are important because The Personal Eternal Creator has entered our stories: “in the fullness of time God sent His Son.”[10] 

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[1] Visit the website www.memoirforchange.org

[2] George Eliot.  1872, 2003. Middlemarch. (Barnes & Noble Classics): 794.

[3] Chip Brown. “The Woman Who Would Be King,” National Geographic April 2009, accessed at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/04/hatshepsut/brown-text/2

[4] Daniel Boorstin. 1987. Hidden History. (Harper & Row): 3. The first chapter of Boorstin’s book entitled “A Wrestler with the Angel” should be read and re-read, giving pause to the process of historical analysis.

[5] I tell my students that television shows like CSI have hurt the impact of eyewitness accounts in the courtroom suggesting that fiber and follicle are the end-all of guilt or innocence.

[6] Karen Armstrong. “Essays: Man vs. God,” Wall Street Journal 12 September 09.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574405030643556324.html

[7] See my comments and footnotes on historiography in part two of this series, “Hummingbird Amputees.”

[8] 2 John 5 references “These written commands which we have had since the beginning” linked to First Testament instruction (Leviticus 19:18) which have come to us “through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him” (Romans 16:26).  Second Testament books such as 2 and 3 John identify the need to compare Truth with falsehood.

[9] John 5:46-47.

[10] Galatians 4:4.

Dr. Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center

TOPNTCH.  XQQSME.  ZIPNBYU.  ULIV1S.  IH8SCHL.  2FAST4U.  MOVIML8.[1] As I travel across American roads, like you, I have smiled at drivers’ creative statements.  There are times it takes me miles before I figure out what the plate was saying.  At other times, I don’t have a clue.  And, of course, there are those plates whose ideas I could not repeat here but almost cause an accident-I’m laughing so hard!

This past weekend I attended a birthday celebration for a friend.  During conversation with others I reminded one person how much I loved his license plate which reads, TELOS.[2] To my surprise, his wife announced her vanity plate read ARCHE.[3] She told the laughable story of how many folks asked, “Who’s Archie?”  But, frankly, I was thrilled.  In a subtle way, the couple was making a statement of Christian belief.  Their cars mirror their thinking.

ARCHE and TELOS is the double plate hanging on the car bumper of Genesis.  Before one reads the book’s first word, an unspoken assumption must be explained.  Genesis is a book of origins (arche), which initiates (arche) the first principle (arche): the idea (arche) came from The Beginning (arche), creation’s Ruler (arche), Jesus[4].  Genesis is, at the same time, a book of purpose (telos) which has an ultimate goal (telos), whose end (telos) is yet to come, but whose outcome (telos) will carry everything to its fitting conclusion (telos), bringing the original intention to completion (telos), creation’s End (telos), Jesus[5]. The last book in God’s Word, Revelation, explains the first book, Genesis, where Christ declares:

I am the Alpha and the Omega, The First and The Last, the Beginning (arche) and the End (telos).[6]

80’s rock n’ roll exactly mirrors beginnings and endings.  I love a strong, driving downbeat that repetitiously provides the rhythm, the baseline of the song.  Melody must grab my attention, giving my toe tap-ability.  Harmonic complements introduce variation, adding tension.  Then there is the obligatory guitar rift in the middle reminding me of the melody, adding its jazz-like “juice,” heightening the excitement.  The final moments make every part satisfying, tying them together with a concluding flourish.  Once I asked my son why I liked 80’s music so well.  “That’s easy Dad.  You like unity and completion.  Eighties’ Rock is a straight line from the beginning to the end.”[7]

The book of Genesis announces ARCHE and TELOS before it utters a word because Jesus IS The Word.[8] The First Testament declares that The Creator created by His Word.[9] Jesus has “become for us wisdom from God.”[10] God created the heavens and earth by His Wisdom.[11] Jesus is “before all things and in Him all things hold together . . . He is the beginning . . .”[12] Jesus Himself is the beginning and the end.  He is the original intention of The Godhead and Jesus will bring everything back to that original intention.  As Lesslie Newbigin has said, “To have discovered the cause of something is to have explained it.  There is no need to invoke purpose or design as an explanation.”[13] Jesus IS both ARCHE and TELOS.

The application of beginning and end impacts every aspect of our being and living.  Understanding our origins gives meaning to our physical world.[14] Orientation to where we live and how we live allows us to create personal goals.[15] Our world makes sense.[16] Sensibility and meaning holds out a standard for right and wrong.[17] Purpose gives a historical orientation.[18] There are, as Richard John Neuhaus’ journal reminds us, a standard for First Things. If there is a first thing this argues for a permanent thing.[19] Eternal boundaries give us markers outside of ourselves to live with propriety.[20] Folks are looking for answers to the very issues Genesis presupposes.

License plates are personal statements of belief.  Everyone everywhere seeks to explain themselves.  Some use car bumpers to do so.  Tim Morris, a science professor at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Georgia, seeks to understand his field of interest with his teaching as a Christian college professor.  In his article entitled, “What Difference Does Being a Christian Make in the Study of the Krebs Cycle?” Dr. Morris explains

Creation is theater. Created reality is not simply the stage or an incredibly complex prop for a story that God is telling; rather, created reality is the gospel story he is telling in time and space.[21]

Creation is “The Gospel,” part of the Good News about Jesus.  My future vanity plate should identify His original Rule, the goal of all things: GENESIS.

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[1] Just in case you aren’t sure what these license plates are saying, here is the translation: TOPNTCH “Top Notch;” XQQSME “Excuse Me”; ZIPNBYU “Zippin’ By You”; ULIV1S “You Live Once”; IH8SCHL “I Hate School”; 2FAST4U “Too Fast For You”; MOVIML8 “Move, I’m Late.”

[2] “Telos” (tell-os) is the English transliteration of the Greek word which means end, purpose, or goal.

[3] “Arche” (are-ka) is the English transliteration of the Greek word which means origin, beginning, or principle.

[4] “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched-this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.”  John goes on to repeat himself thrice more: “we proclaim what we have seen and heard.” (1 John 1:1-3)  Christ’s rule is understood in Ephesians 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Colossians 1:16; 2:10, 15.

[5] Jesus said “What is written about me is reaching its fulfillment” (or “end,” Luke 22:37); the end is yet to come (Matthew 24:6, 14).  “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (Romans 10:4) because God’s wrath will come “at last” (1 Thessalonians 2:16).

[6] Revelation 1:8; 21:6; 22:13.

[7] Some of you will note that even the construction of this paragraph reflects a structured order, a beginning and an end.  The explanatory lines about music have two complementary ideas, completed in each case by a gerund phrase.  Literature is about meaning seen through the method together giving a message.

[8] John 1:1-18.

[9] Genesis 1:3, etc. “Let there be . . .”; Psalms 33:6 and 148:5; Isaiah 48:13.

[10] 1 Corinthians 1:30 (NIV).

[11] Psalm 104:24; Proverbs 3:19; esp. 8:22-31; Jeremiah 10:13; 51:15.

[12] Colossians 1:17-18 (ESV).

[13] Lesslie Newbigin. 1986. 1990. Foolishness of The Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture. (Reprint, Eerdmans): 24

[14] Nehemiah 9:6.

[15] Note the strong genealogical connections of place and vocation in places like Genesis 10.

[16] Psalms 147 and 148.

[17] 1 Timothy 6:10 where money is said to be “the root” or “origin,” “the very beginning of” evil.

[18] Matthew 19:4, 8; John 8:44.

[19] Psalm 119:91.

[20] Jeremiah 31:35-37; 33:2, 20-26.

[21] Tim Morris. “What Difference Does Being a Christian Make in the Study of the Krebs Cycle?”  Pro Rege March 2009, 28.

June 25, 2010 5:00 am

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June 27, 2010 5:00 am

Dr. Mark Eckel, Director, Mahseh Center

Hummingbirds were the passion of Emily Dickenson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mark Twain.  Christopher Benfey’s new book A Summer of Hummingbirds traces the interconnectivity of these writers to their interpretation of the beating wings: the fleeting nature of human life.  All had left behind their Christian roots seeing that “the old pieties no longer sufficed” opting instead for a patchwork quilt of personalized faith.  Dickinson concluded “human life, all life, is a route of evanescence.”[1] She developed a view of existence centered in “birds, flowers, the shifting quality of light and of mind.”  Roger Lundin’s review points out the problem of those fluttering wings: “the loss of belief left them riddled with phantom pain.”[2]

Amputees confess the ache of loss to be real.  The mind actually creates a physical illusion to compensate for the missing appendage.[3] But doctors observe that while time may dissipate the sense of loss, it is the focus on something else that eventually eliminates phantom pain.  Creating a trick, a “virtual reality” for the person who has lost a limb, may enhance a patient’s recovery.[4] The illusion of loss is exactly the problem faced by people who have the original taken away.

I use only Coffee-Mate® in my Dunkin’ Donuts® coffee: the packaging adds the large statement “the original.”  Ask anyone who knows me well.  I cannot stand substitute coffee creamer.  One of the true things about aging is the idea that when we have the option, we are no longer interested in knock-offs.  We want what we want; time is short!  While situations arise where my beloved Coffee-Mate® is inaccessible, my taste buds know something is amiss.   Substitution seeks to overcome, but can never replace, the original.

Genesis has had its share of imitators.  Some will declare that since Genesis history was written later than Egyptian or Mesopotamian mythology, that Genesis is the “copy.”  While “literary similarities” exist, “borrowing” does not have to be the explanation.[5] For over 20 years while teaching the book of Genesis from high school through master’s level students I have used a “compare and contrast” approach to learning.  Just before going off to college, for instance, seniors were asked to find similarities and differences between pagan mythologies of the Babylonian Enuma Elish and North American Raven versus the Genesis record. I still have their brilliant summaries in my files.  In an honest comparison, high school seniors discovered this truth: distinction is more important that similarity.

And for 20 years I have diagrammed an alternative approach on the white board.   The original Truth recorded in Genesis 1-2 was distorted by sin because of Genesis 3 creating warped imitations throughout human history.  One nation chiseling their distortion of the original 500 years prior to the actual record does not call Genesis into question.  The differences are so pronounced, Genesis stands alone.

The pagan view is plainly magical-committed to ritual, attempting to placate unknown, unseen, unpleasant forces.  Mythological tales are written in a poetic fashion, creating memorable stories, giving a token sense of human origins.  But these tales are nowhere close to reliable.  John Walton says it best, “Though its permutations vary from time to time and culture to culture, the paganism in each of us is inclined to fabricate a manageable deity.[6] The fantastic nature of the gods and their situations fit better in a graphic novel (read, “comic book”).  Cartoons, though they reflect aspects of supernatural and natural worlds, are only hopeful of something other.

The biblical view is plainly mystical-the text is committed to an “other” sense of wonder and mystery.  The creation account is striking.  Genesis 1:1-2:3 is unique.  A “matter-of-fact” style dictates a form of composition little known in the ancient world: historiography.  Historiography reported events that occurred in space and time.  Deuteronomy 4 captures the point:

For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. . . . Know therefore today, and lay it to your heart, that the Lord is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath, there is no other.[7]

Yahweh had warned against the rise of imitators.[8] This should come as no surprise since “correspondence is founded on metaphor . . . and that metaphor is the basis of all language and thought, as it is of all religion . . . Deep within each of us, the need for correspondence remains . . . the need to perceive ourselves as belonging to the cosmos.”[9]

Myth in the ancient world was a substitute for the local community concerning their gods and life’s origin.  For most people groups, their creation stories gave direction for their priests to perform their ritual, magical ceremonies to maintain proper relations with the gods.  Evil was co-equal and co-eternal with their gods.  Time was cyclical; “Fate” controlled life.

Against the culture of the day, Genesis declares God is God alone.  He personally plans and oversees all events (Providence).  He controls all of life (Sovereignty).  He gives direction to human time (History).  He is unchanging giving certainty and security in the world (Immutable).  He directs all of life toward His purposes (Teleology).

When I read about Dickinson, Stowe, and Twain this week I felt a deep sadness.  My emotions are the same anytime I hear of folks yearning for truth, painful in their loss, settling for falsehood.  In contrast to the views of the writers mentioned above, hummingbirds are a result of God’s direct creation.  I suspect that if this little creature could speak she would say, “Listen to my wings; their sound is in praise of my Creator!”[10] So it is no surprise to hear Scripture so often compare those refusing to believe as “having no eyes to see, nor ears to hear.”[11] Amputation of The Truth, is simply rebellion against The Truth.[12]

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[1] Evanescence means disappearing, vanishing, or vaporous.

[2] As quoted by Roger Lundin in his review “Old Pieties No Longer Sufficed,” Books & Culture Sept/Oct 2009, 16-18.

[3] V. S. Ramachandran and S. Blakeslee. 1998. Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (William Marrow).

[4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6146136.stm

[5] Among the many books that could be mentioned in promotion of such a view, consider R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament, (Hendrickson, 2004); Walter Kaiser, The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant? (IVP, 2001); K. A. Kitchen, The Reliability of the Old Testament, (Eerdmans, 2006).

[6] John H. Walton. 2001. The NIV Application Commentary: Genesis. (Zondervan): 55.

[7] Deuteronomy 4:32, 39 (ESV).

[8] Deuteronomy 4:15-19.

[9] “This is why something inside us responds spontaneously to metaphor, the heart of all poetry and, finally, of all language and all meaning.” Thomas Cahill. 1998. The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. (Doubleday): 49, emphasis mine.

[10] Indeed all creation is commanded to give praise to its Creator: Isaiah 44:23; 49:13.

[11] For example, Deuteronomy 29:4; Jeremiah 5:21-24; Ezekiel 12:2; Mark 8:17-18; Romans 11:8.

[12] “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).

October 30, 2009 11:00 am

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November 1, 2009 11:00 am