After Evolution What?

Today we often see vigorous attempts in the media and in the church to persuade people to accept evolution. The irony of this is that the attempt appears to be succeeding just as signs emerge that the theory of evolution is about to be replaced.

IT would be foolish to predict that evolution will go, since the history of science is full of examples of theories which have remained popular long after the evidence against them was well known. But the history of science also shows how quickly a theory can fall and that such falls are often preceded by a public highlighting of what the theory can’t explain. For evolution theory, this is happening right now.

Gaps in the fossil record are being discussed on T.V. Many prominent evolutionists have accepted that they do exist. The outspoken Professor of Geology at Harvard University, Stephen Gould, has even called the extreme rarity of transitional forms "the trade secret of paleontology". Gould is not alone. There is an increasing number of proponents of similar views simply because the fossil record does not show gradual evolution. Instead, according to them, it shows catastrophe, sudden extinction and abrupt change. But if this is at last being publicly acknowledged, why have people so brazenly believed the opposite? Why have they believed in spite of the facts and not because of them?

It was commonly believed for the last one hundred years or so, that man was progressing. Man was not yet perfect but he was becoming better and better in ability, knowledge and morality. It was natural to think of animals the same way. Just as man could become better so they could become better. That is, they could become more adapted to their environment.

Believing in progress, people ignored the possibility that animals already were adapted to their environments. If an animal already is adapted to its environment any deviant form will be less adapted and therefore will be removed by natural selection. Thus "natural selection" can cause evolution only if animals are not already adapted.

Further if an animal already is adapted to its environment, change in the environment is likely to lead to the extinction of that animal.

As long as the belief in progress reigned supreme people could not see this fallacy in the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Today things are different. We live in a world of endangered species‹ecological disaster. Animals are not changing to cope with a changing environment; they’re not evolving. They’re becoming extinct. The media tells us that they are too specialized; they need our help to survive. Things such as this are making it harder for people to believe that evolution by slow improvement is what happens in real life.

We also live in an age of revolution, of wars, and rumours of wars, of famine and extinction. I do not think it is accidental that some of the proponents of the new catastrophic geology are also Marxists who believe history is a process of violent change. The way in which we see the present must influence how we see the past.

The prophets of doom tell us daily that man’s ‘progress’ now threatens to destroy us, that there will be military or ecological disaster on a global scale. It is not so popular now to believe openly in slow and inevitable human progress. Such influences also make it easier for people to believe that the history of the world also had its global catastrophies.

The historian of science, T. S. Kuhn, has pointed out that a new theory gains popularity by claiming to explain what the old theory could not explain. The newer theories of rapid evolution are seizing on the great embarrassment of the older theory of slow evolution, namely the gaps in the fossil record. Once it was said that evolution happened so slowly it could not be seen. Now it’s stated that it happened so fast in the past we’ve missed it. How did it happen in this new way? No one is quite sure. Is any new theory likely to be proposed?

IF we go back to the days before Charles Darwin we find that many popular and scholarly authors advocated evolution. However they did not have a convincing explanation of how it could occur. Darwin’s contribution was to give them a believable way for it to happen. But 120 years of research and the changing times have made Darwinian and neo- Darwinian views on evolution not so acceptable. Evolutionists are back in the same dilemma. They still believe in the theory; they just don’t know how it happened. How will they solve this problem? What will any new hypothesis look like?

I suggest we should look at the unorthodox literature of the day, even that on the so-called lunatic fringe. Many authors want to see the world‘s history as a series of revolutions and catastrophies. There are even people who believe that long ago the earth reached a high stage of civilization only to be wiped out by natural or man-made disaster. It would not be difficult to construct a new theory of evolution from this. Perhaps rapid changes occur after global disasters like nuclear war or collision with asteroids. Science Fiction? Already we have ‘respectable’ scientists such as Nobel prize winning atheist, Francis Crick, suggesting ‘genes from space’ as the origin of life on earth.

When or if such a new theory becomes popular, what will the Christian church do? After all, prominent church men and laity from all denominations are amongst the staunchest defenders of the present view of evolution. What will they do when science moves on to the next theory? Creationists often find that their most ardent opposition comes not from non-Christians but from church people who have made evolution an article of faith. People who claim to be Christians are the defenders of such a non-Christian idea as evolution. Why? Mostly because they want to appear intellectually respectable to their non-Christian peers. There is however probably one other reason.

We need to realise that the belief in human progress which has dominated the last 100 years and has had a great influence on evolutionary thinking, was partly Christian in origin. The history of the world does move toward a final goal. On the surface this had a similarity to belief in slow but sure human progress. But the progress idea is profoundly anti-Christian because God is not regarded as the cause of any movement to a goal in history.

Likewise if it does become popular to regard the history of the earth as just a series of catastrophies, this would merely be a return to old pagan views that history has no end, it just repeats itself. Some Christians will be attracted to this view of repeating catastrophies, because they have some sort of belief in one great disaster¹Noah’s flood. They will undoubtedly jump on the bandwagon. When will Christians learn that they should not adopt theories, however popular, that are contrary to Scripture?

Whether the history of the earth is presented as a slow evolutionary progress or as a series of catastrophies, there are elements in both that will look vaguely familiar to those Christians who are vaguely familiar with Scripture. Yet both are quite contrary to Christian faith. They can be believed only if we ignore what the Bible says about how the world came into existence and what God has done with it since.

(originally sourced from http://creation.com/after-evolution-what)

The Christian Teacher

The Problem

Teaching can be viewed as something so simple that one cannot understand why so many children do not learn. Or it can be seen as something so complex and demanding that it is a wonder anybody succeeds in it at all. It could be seen as something one can do just by courses with a certain title. Or it can be seen as a gift you either have or you do not have.

Each school of educational theory has its own definition of what teaching is. Yet there are certain things on which they all seem to agree. Rationalism has largely triumphed in respect of the way in which men and women are trained to be teachers. They are taught theoretical educational psychology and educational philosophy. The premise is that the empirical study of how children function and learn will enable teachers to teach them the ‘natural’ way. Similarly educational philosophy strives to create the perfect rational analysis of education.

There is a story, which may be apocryphal but could well be true, about a Scottish university. There was a proposal to add a department of Education to the Arts Faculty. This created strong opposition from some quarters within the faculty. They insisted that a university was for theoretical study and should not become a mere college for teaching the techniques of education. They were solemnly assured, however, that education as taught at the university level was a theoretical discipline quite divorced from what goes on in the classroom. That could describe many tertiary courses in education. Teachers use very little, if anything, of what they are taught in educational psychology or philosophy.
The reason for the practical uselessness of these subjects is obvious. Rationalism is wrong. You cannot start with rats in mazes or salivating dogs and come to a complete understanding of a child. You cannot lock his stages of learning into a necessary sequence on the model of the organism progressing from one stage of evolution to another, because the child is made in the image of God. There is a measure of order and regularity in the child’s behaviour and learning, for he is a creature. Yet the child still retains the mystery of a person.

Thus it is not that it is wrong to seek by observation to understand children. It is that the reductionist and evolutionary assumptions built into much educational psychology ruin it. The sort of observations that are useful are those made by good teachers who have had years of experience. They are not the abstract and theoretical sort the rationalist wants.

Thus teachers are trained by receiving courses which are likely to be misguided and unlikely to be useful. Education departments seem reluctant when it comes to curriculum matters to admit that the various approaches current are mere reflections of competing philosophical schools. That reluctance can be traced back to another factor. There is strong scepticism in the general community about philosophy. The various schools have been at work for hundreds of years and have not been able to solve the problems of man. To admit that a certain curriculum approach was an application of romanticism would not be likely to commend it. Hence teachers are either told that a certain approach is the quintessence of education wisdom and all who do not use it are ignoramuses, or they are confronted with the competing array and told to take a little bit of each. Both approaches leave the teacher without adequate basis for judgment.

Yet for all this, the educational establishment strives hard to create a mystique about education. It knows that there is strong public disillusionment with education. Education competes for the increasingly tight financial resources of governments. If teaching is something anybody can do without special and formal training, then the status of those who have been trained formally is diminished and the status of those who train them is also diminished. Against this threat ‘Education’ has to be promoted as an esoteric discipline which requires special training.

This is not an argument against the training of teachers. It is simply to point out that much which goes by that name is useless. If the teacher thinks such a course has made him an ‘expert’ he is doubly confused.

In Christian schools the problem is more often a recognition that teacher training has proved very deficient. The problem is then to know what one should put in its place. There are a number of simple things which can be done.

Explain

A fundamental role of the teacher is to explain. This might seem self-evident but it is important to realize that the schools of educational method so far considered de-emphasize, or even oppose, explaining. The rationalist does so because he believes the correct arrangement of material will make explanation unnecessary. Furthermore, the rationalist is generally enamoured of his theoretical jargon. He does not want to break his jargon down, explain and simplify it. He simply wants the pupil to learn his system. The romanticist does not want the teacher to explain lest he impose adult categories on the child. The follower of Dewey wants the child to discover it for himself so the teacher is not encouraged to explain.

Further, teachers have generally been taught at a crucial point of their preparation by people who use fairly technical and abstract language. The tertiary lecturer is generally using a very different style from that which a teacher needs to use. Hence the teachers have lacked models for an explanatory role.
When a teacher has himself been taught at school by a method which did not involve explanation, then there are additional consequences. Once more the teacher is lacking a model. Teaching methods which do not involve explaining can lead to a good student having an intuitive feel of the material without that material being known and fully understood. When that student later becomes a teacher he may have trouble giving an explanation of material he himself does not fully understand. He will expect his pupils to learn as he did, by intuition without the material being explained.

Explaining involves breaking the material down into small steps. Many children who are said not to be able to grasp a certain concept, can do so if they are taught in small stages and if various parts of the problem are isolated and taught sequentially. Learning by discovery tends to present a complex situation to a child, trusting in the child’s ability to recognize the significant elements of that complex. Children often find that very hard to do. Explaining is the art of selecting the parts of the problem and making sure each is understood before proceeding to the next. As the child’s ability grows, the elements being selected naturally become larger.

One can break the material down, simply because there is order in the creation. Once again it needs to be stressed that we do not see order as the rationalist does. It is not an exhaustive theoretical order. Nevertheless there is regularity. It needs to be stressed also that many teachers have come through a romanticist training with very strong bias against analysis. Therefore this approach may be strange to many teachers.

Explaining also involves illustration. The classic example of this is Scripture. In this matter the church can be of aid to the teachers. Good preaching and teaching in the church generally involves illustration. If the teacher sees a model in the church it may help to compensate for the lack of models in his own education.

Rationalism, being abstract and theoretical, is generally averse to illustration. Further, the rationalist, believing truth to be self-evident, does not see the need for illustration. Teachers who have come out of such an environment must give time to thinking of illustrations, comparisons, stories, demonstrations and such like, to get the point across. Later it will come more naturally.

Explaining involves repetition. Repetition is important for fixing something in the mind and making it available for instant recall. It is also necessary for the child who does not learn quickly. Once again we must have compassion for the pupil who has problems. That child will often learn provided something is repeated. Of course attention has to be given to making the repetition interesting and purposeful. If the teacher sees no point in repetition he will convey that to the class and they will see it as boring. If the teacher sees purpose in it and works at it, then the reaction of the child will be different.

The extension of repetition is memorization. You only memorize what you think is so important that you want it perfectly at your fingertips. The romanticist will, of course, claim that nothing is worth memorizing because nothing the adult tells the child has lasting worth. In the strong bias against memorization in today’s education we see something of the strength of romanticism.

There is an important side-effect of memorization. It develops the ability to memorize. Certain professions, for example engineering, where it is useful to retain formulae in the memory rather than consult a book on the job, are now finding a problem. Engineers, who have come through an education opposed to memorization, have great trouble in memorizing what is desirable. Another consequence is inability to memorize Scripture.

The loss of ability to memorize affects the tests that schools can give children. If the child lacks the ability to absorb and remember information, then testing is very difficult. Often schools try to compensate for this by reducing the material to be tested. For example, instead of a year’s material the test may be applied to a month’s material. This, however, affects curriculum. Courses which require time to build concepts or information tend to disappear and to be replaced by more packaged, less conceptual courses. That is an educational loss. The child finds it then much more difficult to cope with major examinations at high school or tertiary level.

Motivate

Children nerd to be motivated to work at learning. For learning necessitates work. It can be difficult, discouraging work. The prime motivation is that God requires it of us. The teacher needs to keep this fact before the child. State schools are forced to seek for alternative motivations. They tend to use self-centred reasons. They will argue that a child should do well at school in order to make money later. Or they will try to use rewards to encourage learning. In a subsidiary way these things may enter into a Christian motivation. We may say a child needs to learn in order to make money, but the money is to support others as well, for example the family and the needy. And we are to use our money that way because God tells us to do so. Ultimately it comes back to our responsibility to God out of gratitude for what he has done for us.

The use of rewards as a motivation is a debated subject. Some schools give material rewards. Others give psychological rewards, for example, commendation. Others again give prestige for academic accomplishment. Against this there are those who are against giving any reward lest children work for the wrong reason.

The Book of Ecclesiastes is relevant for this issue. Ecclesiastes also speaks to an issue which is quite common amongst students. Some students cannot complete their work because they must have it perfect. Ecclesiastes points out the futility of the human search for final perfection and final accomplishment. Yet it also has another message. A man is to see good in his labour (2:24). Ecclesiastes is dealing with the practical equivalent of the debate between rationalism and romanticism that was considered earlier. The perfectionist wants to have the perfection and finality of God. He is not willing to accept creaturely limitations. A reaction to the failure of this attempt is to say that there is no point whatsoever in work. But to work is undoubtedly beneficial to both man and child. We all gain from a sense of accomplishment and achievement. We need to see good in our labour. So the child needs to be commended for the work he has done. He needs that sense of satisfaction. Since he is a child and has trouble gauging the standard of his own work, he needs the teacher to commend work that has been done well.

Behaviourism has distorted the whole issue of rewards. The behaviourist sees man as an animal. An animal responds to immediate material rewards. Hence man is seen as responding in a similar way. Given man’s material needs, and in particular his sinful cravings, he will often work for material rewards. However, the behaviourist ignores all the other aspects of man’s character. He does not see that man, made in the image of the Creator, needs to work at something and to accomplish something. The behaviourist will stress the material reward and ignore the satisfaction of work accomplished. Generally speaking the most needed reward is the praise and encouragement of a respected and loved teacher or parent. Schools which substitute material rewards for this show a lack of understanding of children.

Related to this issue is the question whether children’s work should be marked and whether that mark should be divulged to the children. A romanticist will reject marking out of hand. Some Christians are opposed to the divulging of marks on the ground that it tends to breed sinful pride and competition. That is certainly a valid concern. They also make the point that children who do not perform well academically may be discouraged, even though they have done well in other, perhaps more important, areas. To give marks for work can tend to the elevation of particular skills to the detriment of others.
These are valid points. Yet we need to be careful of falling into the reverse trap. A school which selects certain pupils to represent it in a sporting competition has done the same thing as marking, for it has recognized that these particular children have outstanding ability in that area.

Paul, in a context where he is talking about the different abilities God has given to the church, points out the need to have a proper and sound assessment of our own abilities. We are not to over-rate them (Romans 12:3). This is an area in which we all struggle and children struggle also. We need to help them to realize that there are tasks at which they excel, and tasks which they find troublesome. A teacher must learn to appreciate the child who has abilities that he or she lacks. To the extent that marking gives a child help in assessing how he is doing, it can be defended. We have to be alert to the problems of pride, competition, and discouragement which may result. Where a child has done well, he needs the extra reinforcement of personal commendation. Where he has done poorly he needs help either to accept lack of ability in that area or to work harder.

Marking can also help the child, and especially the parent, to assess the child’s progress towards the goal of school education. The school is not an independent entity. It must communicate with the parents and often does so by issuing periodical reports on behaviour, ability, and success or otherwise.
The discussion of the problems that come with marking reinforces a point made earlier. The rewards of behaviourist systems cannot take such problems into account. The personal commendation can be slanted to deal with these problems, whereas tangible rewards or elevation to some higher stage of work cannot perform the same service.

A Model

All the time a teacher is teaching he is under examination. His character is analysed. His fairness is examined. His inconsistencies are probed. That is why teaching is such a test of character. The teacher gives orders and sets tasks. Those under orders will react to any hint of hypocrisy.

As far as curriculum is concerned, there is a very important sense in which the teacher is a model. There is strong pressure on Christians to live as though Christianity is practically irrelevant. As far as schooling is concerned this shows itself in a clear separation between secular academic content and Scripture. The teacher has to be the model of one who has striven and laboured to interpret all his work and effort from a biblical point of view. If he has not completely succeeded, that is not a problem. We are not perfect. If it is not obvious that he is working to the limit of his powers, there is a great problem. For he is teaching the children by example that Christianity and academic disciplines can be separated.
Many Christian educators on the tertiary level may be opposed to Christian schooling and committed to the state school system. Others are consciously or unconsciously worried by charges that the Christian school system is educationally inferior. They see the state school system as the standard. Thus they are basically committed to the state system. That means being tied to a curriculum and educational methodology that is not Christian.

Yet people at large know that there is to be something different about the Christian in education. If it cannot be curriculum or methodology, then what is it? They seek the answer in the realm of personal relationships. They say that a Christian teacher of children should be outstandingly loving and kind. That is certainly true, but it is only part of the story. Such love and kindness should characterize every believer. It is not the distinguishing mark of teaching. It is not the sole thing that separates the Christian and the non-Christian teacher. The content of instruction must also be different. The methodology must be consistent with biblical teaching. The example the teacher should set has to be an example which applies to every aspect of life, public and private.

Discipline

The area of discipline represents a major problem for teachers. We must remember that we are influenced by the approaches of non-Christian educational systems. We need to think through our Christian basis for what we do.

First we must keep clear the distinction between the results of sin and sin itself. For example, if a child is blind, then his being blind has some connection with sin. He lives in a fallen world. Yet he may not be personally responsible for his blindness. We could not hold him responsible if there was something he did not learn because he was blind.

Similarly there are many other physical causes of failure to learn. We cannot hold a child responsible or punish a child for them. Nevertheless not all failures to learn are due to some physical problem over which the child has no control. They may be due to something for which the child is accountable, as, for example, failing to study when told to do so.

Horror stories are sometimes told about schools in former days, as, for example, the caning of children who failed a test. The problem here is that the distinction has not been made between failure due to circumstances beyond the child’s control and failure due to disobedience.

In practice, when it comes to school performance, it may be very difficult to assess the causes. Is the child to blame or not? A child with physical problems is often indulged and so will have behaviour problems as well. Conversely a child may discover that he escapes work by pretending to have a problem. Often the problems are so intertwined that it takes considerable skill to distinguish them.
In practice, the areas where a teacher needs to exercise various forms of discipline are not so much failure in academic work as in the practices or attitudes which cause that failure. Or it may be practices which occur at school time but are unrelated to schooling. One thinks here of problems that arise in the playgrounds. Basically, evil practices can be described as disobedience either directly to the commandments of God or indirectly to those in legitimate authority under God.

Non-Christian educational systems are facing the consequence of destroying the moral basis of parental authority. They are faced with very serious moral and behaviour problems. Yet they do not believe there is any absolute right or wrong. They are forced to define sin as anti-social or inappropriate behaviour. They attempt various behaviour modification techniques and yet the crucial factor is lacking, namely, the knowledge and conviction as to the differences between right and wrong.

Discipline must start with the teacher’s conviction that certain behaviour is wrong. If the teacher is not sure of that he will not discipline effectively. He will discipline to his own convenience and the children will sense his inconsistencies. Further, he cannot give an adequate explanation to the children of his standards of discipline.

If we start with Scripture then we see that Scripture not only tells us what is right and wrong. It also shows variation in punishments. That is not to say we can learn from Scripture what should be the punishment for a particular misdemeanour on the part of a child. Yet we should not treat every sin as of equal gravity.

This point is made to temper and put in perspective important biblical instruction. The Book of Proverbs sees corporal punishment as appropriate for the child (13:24; 22:15; 23:13, 14). To respond to each misdemeanour with the same physical punishment is to ignore the gradation in the seriousness of sin found in Scripture. On the other hand, to see physical punishment as the very last resort, never to be used except in some rare and extreme circumstance, is not taking Proverbs seriously. Each school needs to come to some sort of consistency in its disciplinary practices. It is worth considering policies in which clear disobedience or wrong to others receives corporal punishment. The problem caused by a policy in which corporal punishment is tried only after everything else has been tried and has failed, is that serious sins are not treated with the remedy Scripture recommends.

The strong opposition to corporal punishment today comes from several factors. One is the belief in the fundamental goodness of the child. Obviously if the child is good, punishment is quite inappropriate. Another factor has already been mentioned: the misuse of punishment as a universal reaction to failure.
The whole subject of discipline has been confused by behaviourism. Behaviourism has no real moral basis. It treats man as an animal whose behaviour is to be modified by suitable punishments. The punishment is thus not adapted to the seriousness of the sin. One practical result of behaviourist schemes of behaviour modification is often a descent into the trivial and the ridiculous. A whole series of trivial punishments is set up that endlessly postpone the moment of effective discipline. Because man is seen as basically an animal there is no incentive to give a reason for him to change. He is to be changed purely by graduated punishments.

Far better is the biblical way: reasoned rebuke with the reason coming from God’s Word, supported where needed by corporal punishment.

The Teacher's Personal Struggle

Many of a teacher’s problems are not with curriculum or methodology. They are with himself. That is not to say that all failure in teaching is due to a teacher having personal problems. Curriculum and methodology play a part. Teachers are also often confronted with the consequences of the system which was described earlier. They find themselves undergoing an academic course of teacher instruction without knowing whether they have the aptitude to be a teacher. Sometimes teachers have problems simply because they are following the wrong profession. To face that fact is not failure.
Furthermore, personal problems may mar the teaching of a person who is definitely gifted. One of the problems of the academic approach to teacher training is that it conveys an idea that the teacher who has completed the course is an ‘expert’. He has passed the examinations; he must be expert! This attitude is particularly inculcated because of the need to bolster the position of the teacher in a system which is usurping the rights of parents. The teacher has to think of himself in that way to justify his authority. Once a teacher sees himself after this fashion, it is very hard to admit that he still needs to learn.

At this point, and with all the other personal problems a teacher faces, his Christian maturity is put to the test. As Proverbs once again points out, the way to wisdom is to desire and long for it (4:7; 2:3ff). The person who thinks that he possesses wisdom to the full does not seek for extra wisdom. But he who is truly taught of the Lord recognizes his need for understanding and growth. This work is largely about curriculum. Hence the aspect of the fitness of teachers may easily be minimized. That arises from the concentration of this work; not from what really applies in the school situation. No curriculum will avail if the teacher is not personally appropriate. Further, we should not merely look for some bare and minimal Christian profession in teachers. We should also look for understanding and a clear desire to grow in the things of the Lord. Unless that is there, the teacher will not survive the personal struggles of the classroom. He may do an acceptable job on casual impressions, but the children will lack the personal stimulus of one grappling with problems and overcoming them in the Lord’s strength.
Further, he may reject a genuinely Christian curriculum as requiring too much work and as being too different from what is fashionable in contemporary education. The person who is growing does not avoid work and is not desirous of comfortable conformity to the world.

Amongst serious personal difficulties in teachers we need to face the following:

a) Lack of Personal Organization and Discipline
Teaching requires organization. The material of lessons must be prepared. The teacher must be punctual. Now obviously there are degrees. One should not go to extremes and have phobias about a single pencil out of place. People with such phobias do not succeed as teachers because their attempt to organize the material world around them is a substitute for being unable to deal with people. Some people come to teaching with a stronger bent for organization than others. Some people tend to be tidier than others. Yet the real question is not what the teacher’s study looks like at home. It is whether he is well organized in respect of work in school.

The students will react to the inconsistencies they see in a teacher. If they are expected to be punctual, they are scornful if a teacher is unpunctual. If their work is expected to be completed at a certain time, they are irritable when it is not returned corrected at a certain time.

At the outset a teacher finds this very hard. He has no stock of prepared work. That is quite understandable. All that can reasonably be expected is that progress is being made. The second year should show a marked improvement on the first.

Sometimes circumstances of a personal nature can intrude into a teacher’s preparation and marking. That cannot be avoided. Difficulties arise even in a teacher’s life. Depending on the age of the children, some brief explanation of them may help the situation. One late arrival of the teacher may well be explained, but if we are perpetually late for our appointments, then our excuses wear thin. If we occasionally run late we feel that the person we have troubled deserves an apology and explanation. Let us remember that children are people deserving similar courtesy.

The sort of curriculum that is developed in this book puts a particular strain on the teacher’s organizational gifts. Curricula in which children supposedly teach themselves are less demanding.
Some organization is required initially to have materials for children to work on. Sometimes this comes pre-packaged for the teacher. Where the teacher is actually teaching it is much more difficult. The teacher has to prepare to introduce and explain. He has to do so in such a way that the class as a whole can understand. And he needs materials prepared on which students can practise concepts and skills.
Lack of organization is also a problem in a teacher’s use of his holiday time. One of the community perceptions of teachers is that they have many more holidays than anybody else. If they genuinely do, then they will often meet with trouble in teaching. A typical situation is that a teacher begins his first year with very little material prepared. That is not his fault. It is largely the fault of his training. Hence, if he is conscientious, he works night and day just to keep up with the class. By the time the holidays come, he rightly feels he has earned a good rest. However, if he uses all such rest-periods as holidays he will find himself in a somewhat unprepared state at the beginning of the next year. Thus the next year will also be taxing. So a cycle develops of overwork at some stages of the year and exhaustion at others. It also intensifies any existing tendencies to do things in a rush at the last moment.

To be an effective teacher, and to have time available for family and other responsibilities, the teacher needs long-term organization. School holidays cater for preparation for the future as well as for recreation.

b) Stagnation
The problems of teachers are very real at the start of their career. Yet after some years a reasonably competent teacher builds a store of materials and experience. What then? There is a danger of stagnation. As one looks at the Christian school movement as a whole, in its many decades of existence, there is relatively little available in the way of good, genuinely Christian curriculum material. And yet one knows that there are experienced teachers everywhere at work who have the ability to write curricula.

There are many causes for the lack. Not all blame should be placed on teachers. Often they are caught in a system which pictures the tertiary person as the expert in curriculum matters. Hence their problem is one of confidence. Or they may receive no encouragement from others around them since the other experienced teachers or parents who should encourage are in the same problem or consumed by school administrative burdens.

Nevertheless some of the lack must be due to stagnation. The teacher has found non-Christian materials that are nottoo offensive in his eyes. Or he is using pre-packaged material that is superficially Christian. As long as he can get by with such material, what incentive does he have to go deeper or to attempt to develop his own materials? A secondary consequence is that the lack of teachers interested in such materials is a disincentive to publishers to market them.

c) Lack of Authority
One teacher walks into a classroom. Without his saying a word, hush descends and the children eagerly turn their minds to learning. Another teacher enters the same classroom. By dint of great effort he obtains some measure of control. For all his control the class throughout the lesson seems more likely to burst into open revolt than to learn.

What is it? What is that mysterious something that some teachers obviously seem to have and others lack? We can call it a charisma or a gift and yet it can be developed. Even a very good teacher may not have been so obviously good at the beginning.

There is no one secret. Doubtless it is partly connected to personality. Yet we can say some things about it. Determination is a major part. The good teacher is determined that the child must and shall learn. The rebellious and mischievous child senses that if he resists then he will be opposing all the power, forces, and energy the teacher can command.

It is not merely determination. Tyrants have that, yet they are poor teachers. It is also selflessness. The determination is for the good of the child, not just for the teacher’s good. A good teacher tends to be an open and generous person.

Can such qualities be nurtured and developed? Determination is much related to conviction. A true conviction is founded on a confidence in Scripture. Teachers with a clear sense of what is right and wrong have a much easier task with discipline. They must possess the determination to succeed as a teacher. If one sees that as his responsibility to God, then it gives him extra incentive. It helps overcome one of the crucial problems of teachers: fear of public exposure. Teaching involves a projection of oneself. As much as an actor on the stage, a teacher projects himself into the public arena. Many teachers find such a projection hard to accomplish. Their style is withdrawn and tentative.

If a man walks down the street shouting and talking very loudly, we note him as having a problem. He is trying to draw attention to himself. If there is a fire and he walks down the street calling out the warning in a subdued and tentative voice, we would also say he has a problem. An extrovert is a bad teacher if his extroversion is selfishly motivated. His concern is himself and not the children. An introvert may also be a bad teacher if the introversion has a selfish motivation. He is then refusing to project his personality for fear of exposure to ridicule and embarrassment.

Many of the other problems we have considered – tardiness, disorganization, etc. – stem from a basic selfishness in the teacher. Other priorities, especially those which are personal, are more important in his eyes.

Here we meet with spiritual problems. The answer lies in placing responsibility to God and concern for the children above oneself. That can only come when the fact of God’s unselfishness in giving his Son for us has taken control of us.

The Textbook Teacher

Few cooks today prepare everything starting from the most basic ingredients. There may be a few who start with wheat and grind their own flour, make their own bread, tomato sauce, and so on. Most make use to a greater or lesser extent of pre-prepared materials. At the other extreme to the cook who starts with his own wheat is the one who simply heats frozen dinners bought in the supermarket.

Similarly teachers vary in the extent to which they rely upon prepared and textbook material. Some do little more teaching than telling the child the starting page in the textbook. Others may do more teaching but have allowed the textbook to shape the curriculum, rather than using textbooks as they fit into the curriculum.

One can sympathize with the teacher’s reliance on the textbook, especially when he is inexperienced. Many teachers in Christian schools teach multiple-grade classes. That increases the preparation time and organizational demands. In order to survive, a teacher may feel it necessary to rely upon textbooks, at least for part of the course.

The problems of textbook reliance are connected to the lack of good Christian texts but they go further. The textbook easily becomes a substitute for teaching given by the teacher himself. Then the classroom lacks the personality and interest that is provided by a living teacher in interaction with the class. A textbook may reinforce a teacher but a textbook cannot replace a teacher. There is also the problem mentioned earlier of a lack of incentive for people to produce Christian texts. If the Christian school teachers have become dependent upon the existing non-Christian or superficially Christian texts, what incentive is there to produce Christian texts of good quality?

Given the demands upon teachers it is unreasonable to expect them to teach without textbooks. However, one would hope to see a lessening of the dependence as the teacher becomes more experienced. We require such independent teachers for the sort of curriculum which is recommended in this book. It is a curriculum for which texts do not presently exist. Teachers dependent upon textbooks will naturally be dismayed at that prospect. If we are to develop really Christian curricula then we must become the masters of the textbooks, using them where possible and yet controlling the course. Otherwise there will never be thoroughly Christian curricula.

The Imperative of Growth

We cannot pretend that the task of being a Christian teacher is an easy one. Nobody starts as a mature, wise, and experienced teacher. Even experienced teachers, if they are not stagnant, are constantly re-evaluating what they are doing, and adjusting it. To expect instant perfection is unreasonable and discouraging. What we should be expecting is growth. The teacher is like the child. The child needs to see evidence that he is learning, that he is making progress. So the teacher for his own encouragement needs to know that he has matured. A teacher with that encouragement projects to the class the example and the enthusiasm of one who is also a learner.

(originally sourced from http://www.the-highway.com/teaching_Weeks.html)

Creation; Genesis; Evolution - An Interview with Dr. Weeks

Interview conducted by Peter Hastie for the February 2011 edition of 'Australian Presbyterian' magazine.


Noel, how authoritative is the Bible when it speaks about the matter of creation? For instance, does it have to provide the same level of detail that we would expect to find in a science textbook before we regard it as infallible and without error?
I understand the Bible to be fully authoritative on any subject with which it deals. However in saying that, I think we need to reflect on what we mean when we say that something is “authoritative”. Let us be aware that often people connect an authoritative work with detail and exhaustiveness.

If we apply this standard to the book of Genesis, then it doesn’t appear to be authoritative, at least in a scientific sense. However, the logical extension of this line of thought is to exclude the Bible from any role in disciplines that have textbooks. If there are more detailed, and more precise textbooks, why consult the Bible at all on these subjects?


The problem with defining authority by whether a book conforms to a “textbook” model is that no human textbook is final and exhaustive. The only person who has exhaustive knowledge is God. If you use the textbook criterion for establishing a book’s authority, then the Bible is exhaustive on nothing. When you com- pare Romans, the great textbook on theology from the Bible, with any modern theological text, then you realise how short and concise Romans is. It seems to me that the same principle applies to the subject of creation. The Bible does not limit its authority on any question; it just lets us know that it has authority on every matter on which it speaks.

Some Christians want to claim that while the Bible is not authoritative in a scientific sense, it is when it speaks on historical and religious matters. The problem is that the Bible does not provide exhaustive information on these issues either. There are many matters in religion and history on which the Bible does not give an absolutely precise and detailed answer. The logical conclusion of this line of thought is that the Bible cannot be an authority in historical, religious or ethical matters either.

How much detail, then, is needed before we can assume that the Bible is speaking authoritatively?
I’m not sure that the level of detail is necessarily relevant to the Bible’s authority. The Bible goes into more detail on some issues than others. We can never assume that if it doesn’t go into detail on some matters then it is not authoritative. We need to recognise that some questions can be dealt with more generally than others and that it’s possible for the Bible to speak in a simple and truth- ful way about these issues without requiring large amounts of detail.


Is it common for Christian scholars to be influenced in their Biblical interpretation by the dominant worldview of their age?
Yes, of course. All of us struggle with the impact of modern views on our thinking. Any Christian who is honest knows that it’s a perpetual struggle to read the Bible without reading modern views into it. The great struggle we face is to conform ourselves to it; our natural inclination is to make it conform to us and our ideas of reality. All Christians face this struggle.


Christians in previous ages have had similar struggles to us in how to deal with the book of Genesis and creation. Augustine is a good example. He faced a serious struggle because many of the prevailing ideas about creation and matter were influenced by Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy. His problem with the Genesis account was that everything didn’t seem to come into being at once. He had difficulty coming to terms with the successive steps of creation in Genesis 1.

Again, Christians who have lived in periods where Deism was a strong influence have had difficulties in understanding Genesis. Deism is the idea that God the creator got everything going at the beginning – that He wound it up like a great clock – but then He withdrew and allowed the universe to proceed on its own. Naturally, that raises issues about the end of the world when the Bible says that the heavens and the earth will be consumed in fire and then remade. Under Deist influence in previous centuries it was argued that at the creation God must have located vast coal seams in the earth so that it would self-combust at the end of the world.


Of course, today there are lots of Christians who feel the pressure of the claims of Darwinism and evolution. Many of them have conceded that evolutionary theories are correct and so they find themselves under constant pressure to accommodate the Bible to the teaching of evolution.


Are many of today’s commentators on the book of Genesis influenced to any significant degree by modern worldviews?
Yes, they are. The most obvious example where they are influenced is in the area of evolution. However, deter- minism is another popular idea that has influenced considerable numbers of them. Quite a few historians today write from the point of view of determinism. They believe that we are totally determined by the influence of our background so that we can never do anything original. They then take this principle and apply it to life in the Ancient Near East and say, “Well, everyone in the Near East was just reproducing what was already there. No one produced anything original. Therefore, the Bible has to reproduce what was already around in the surrounding pagan cultures.” Thus determinism is imposed on the Bible.


How has the idea of evolution impacted upon Bible interpretation?

Well, evolution, because it is so random by nature, requires immense peri- ods of time to work. Scholars are always under pressure to lengthen the time periods in the Bible. They have to stretch out history as far as possible. This creates huge problems with Bible chronology.

There is a further problem as well with evolution. If it occurs spontaneously and is entirely random, God is excluded from the process. The Bible teaches that God upholds everything by His word of power. This means that He sustains the whole universe moment by moment. In that sense, there are no random processes. However, if we adopt a theory of origins that actually excludes God’s involvement from the creative process, then we begin to look at the world from a naturalistic rather than theistic point of view. So evolution creates a range of problems for those who regard it as the mechanism through which the world began.

Is the Genesis creation account time-bound to the age in which it is written? Can it speak meaningfully to people living in the 21st century?
If Scripture is shaped and its concepts supplied by the culture in which it arose, then it is all determined by that culture. Hence, all of it, every idea and concept must be changed to be relevant to another culture. To say that it is time- bound in a scientific sense, but not in a religious one, misses the point.


Scripture rejects the view that it is time-bound simply because God is God. He is not bound and captive within history. Of course, if we exclude Him and His revelation from the world, we open the door to cultural relativism. But the Bible rejects such exclusion. Again, the idea that the message of God changes from age to age is rejected in Scripture. The gospel that is preached on the eve of Christ’s return is the very same gospel that was preached by the Apostles: “Fear God, and give Him the glory” (Rev. 14:7). As Revelation 14:6 says, it is an eternal gospel.

We need to realise that the ideas of a culture are not neutral. They are influenced by the culture’s acceptance of, or rejection of, the truth of God. This was true in Biblical times as well as in our own. The Bible teaches that God is absolutely sovereign over the whole process of creation and that He brought the world into being through His word. The modern scientific view excludes God from the process of creation or simply allows Him the opportunity to kick start it. It doesn’t permit Him an ongoing role. However, if there is no ongoing role of God in the world, then how is it possible on such Deistic assumptions for Jesus to be the Son of God? Again, how is it possible to have the Holy Spirit active in our age?

How dependent are we on the Holy Spirit to gain a true understanding of the book of Genesis?
We are completely dependent upon Him. As the apostle Paul says, “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). This means that any scholarship on the book of Genesis that does not rely upon the help of the Holy Spirit will be unable to explain its meaning fully. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the non-Christian scholar cannot draw our atten- tion to issues and other phenomena, but it does mean that he or she has an important limitation on their understanding. They may be able to see certain things, but they won’t be able to explain them.


Do you have any thoughts on guiding principles of how we should approach the text of Genesis?
My advice on reading the book of Genesis is that you must come to it the way the Bible itself comes to it. Look at the rest of Scripture and observe how it approaches Genesis. The early chapters of Genesis are referred to frequently in the rest of Scripture. When the Bible writers refer to it as a foundation for an argument, they treat it in a very straightforward, literal, historical way. There are some instances in the Bible, particularly in Job and the Psalms, where creation is referred to in a more lyrical way. But this is never done in a way that challenges the actual fact of the creation.


Is there any significance in the fact that God’s creation of the world is stated in the very first verse of the Bible?

Yes, there is. I’ve just commented that the Bible builds its message in a cumulative way. It starts with the creation and it builds on that. One of my sons was running a Bible study for some Chinese students and was thinking about the best way to explain the Christian message. So he thought, “we’ll begin with the gospel.” He soon realised that these students didn’t understand some of the basic concepts that were assumed by the gospel. They had no fundamental Christian worldview. He tried to work out how he could best get the message across to them and one of the Chinese students said to him, “Isn’t there anything in the Bible before the message of Jesus?”


When we look at Paul’s method of evangelism with a pagan audience we see that he gives a major place to creation and providence in explaining the gospel. For instance, when he is speaking to the people in Lystra and Athens, Paul reminds his audience of these important truths. One of the problems with evangelism today is that it omits a God-centred approach to creation and providence. However, if people don’t believe that they are made by God and sustained by Him, they won’t have any sense of being accountable to Him.

What impact will there be on evangelism if we try to explain creation in terms of modern ideas such as evolution?

If you look at the history of the church over the last 100 years, you will realise that Protestantism has been seriously weakened in the Western world by challenging such fundamental ideas as the creation in the biblical account. If you undermine the reliability and authority of the Old Testament, you put yourself on a downhill slope. Once you are headed in that direction, it is inevitable that your approach to the New Testament will be affected too. Finally, when you take away the very foundations of the gospel message, preaching will lose its power and the church will decline.

Where did these critical and evolutionary notions first arise in modern Christianity?
This is a complex issue but it’s possible to trace it back to critical German scholarship in the 18th and 19th centuries. As soon as you challenge the authority of the Bible and God’s involvement in the world, you have to come up with another way that explains the origins of Scripture and what is happening in the Biblical story.


What scholars did in the 19th century was to adopt the popular view of the Romantic period that man had begun in a primitive and unsophisticated state and then began to develop and mature. Scholars believed that at a later stage the priestly class took control of Israel’s story. The romantic view that was imposed on the Bible was that civilisation began in a naïve polytheistic environment which then developed into ethical monotheism and then the priesthood dominated and rewrote the history to emphasise their role. That’s been the prevailing theory in modern critical scholarship and has been the underlying assumption of many people’s thinking about the book of Genesis. Obviously Genesis does not begin with polytheism so it cannot be right.


Where do we find a reference in the Scriptures that tells us that creation is one of the primary doctrines upon which there is no room for concession?
One place we find reference to the creation as a primary doctrine in the Scriptures is in the Gospels when Jesus talks about marriage in Matthew 19:4-6. Jesus grounds the institution of mar- riage in the original creation. When Paul explains the role of Christ in redemption in Romans 5 he also refers to the role of Adam at the time of the creation and fall. Again, when Paul preaches to pagan audiences in the book of Acts he goes back to creation. These are the sorts of passages I had in mind.


What should we say to people who claim that Genesis 1 only intends to teach us that God created the world, not how he created it?

I tell them to read the text. As Christians we have to take the text seriously. We stand under the word of God and not over it. Since this is so, we must respect the plain meaning of the text.

So what is your reading of the text?
It seems very clear to me that the writer wants us to understand that God created the world in successive stages. That is certainly a “how”. When you look at the procedure of how it was done, the text tells us that God created the environment before He put living creatures into it. The creation of man is actually the climax of a series of processes and actions that enable him to live in glorious surrounds. This, of course, reminds us of how merciful and kind God is to the human race. In other words, “how” God created is meant to induce in us a sense of gratitude and obligation for God’s goodness.


What do you say to people who look at the literary structure of Genesis 1 and 2 and disagree with your interpretation of it? Some Christians think the “frame-work hypothesis” gives a better reading of the creation account.
The problem with the frame-work hypothesis is that it is not actually built on the structure of the text. For instance, how do scholars who support the frame-work hypothesis know that God didn’t create the world in the structured and ordered way that is set out in Genesis 1? How can they be sure that God didn’t structure the world over the six-day period that is specified in the text? The truth is they can’t be sure. What they are really doing is importing a hypothesis from outside the text itself.


I really think that Bible scholars have to take the text and its structures seriously. Structures are built into the text and there are a stack of them there in Genesis 1. I think it’s fairly obvious that life and reality are structured and this is the clear witness of the text.


Some scholars say that the creation account shouldn’t be taken literally because it’s either poetry or myth. Is that true?

No, it’s not. On a purely technical or linguistic basis, it is untrue to say that Genesis 1 is poetry. It’s a narrative and it reveals all the marks of narrative writing. If people want to know what Hebrew poetry looks like, they should read Psalm 104. Psalm 104 is Genesis 1 in poetry. If you compare the two passages, the differences are fairly obvious.

What are the characteristics of Hebrew poetry?
One of the main features of Hebrew poetry is parallelism. If you look at the psalms, you will see it again and again. There is nothing like this in Genesis 1. We certainly have structure in Genesis 1, but it is nothing like normal Hebrew poetic structure.

Some people suggest that Genesis 1 is actually written in the form of an ancient Hebrew hymn. What do you think?

I think they should read the psalms if they want to know what a hymn would look like in biblical times. As I’ve already mentioned, Genesis 1 is not structured like any psalm. To suggest otherwise is to fail to see the difference between normal Hebrew poetry and narrative.


It’s been popular in some circles to say the Genesis creation account is a fable or a myth. People say that it teaches universal truths through the device of a simple story. It’s not necessary for the story itself to be true even though the truths it conveys are. What’s your response to that?

My response is that the rest of the Bible does not interpret Genesis 1 and 2 as though it were myth. For example, both Moses and Jesus believed that there was an original Sabbath day and it is upon that event that they develop the law of the Sabbath. Neither of them regards it as a legend or myth. Jesus certainly regards marriage as grounded in an actual historical event when God created Eve and gave her to Adam as his wife.

If people want to claim that the events that are recorded in the Bible are actually myths, then why stop with the creation account? Why not also apply it to the Gospels? Why not apply it to the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus? The reason why we shouldn’t is that the Gospels actually tell us when Jesus is using a parable. Clearly, the Gospel writers understood the difference between the historical reality of His deeds and miracles and some of His teaching devices which we call parables.


Again, my problem with this whole approach of calling Genesis 1 and 2 a myth is that what we are doing is that we are making a decision outside of the text as to how we are going to read it. You see, there is no marker in the text that tells us, “Here is a myth.” However, in the case of Jesus telling His parables, we do have a marker in the text. Further, there are no markers in the text of the Gospels that suggest to us that each of the Gospels is a parable, nor is there any marker in the book of Genesis that indicates that we are meant to understand it is a parable.


How would you construe the literary genre of Genesis 1 to 11?
It tells a story in a narrative form. Frankly, I don’t think we should get too hung up on the issue of genre. Genre is one of those fads that everyone loves to talk about today. However, it’s interesting that there are some developments in the field of ancient history, especially in the Mesopotamian field, where scholars are saying, “Hold on a minute. Truly great and ground-breaking literature occurs when an author draws upon a multitude of sources and creates something original.” There’s an interesting paper on the Gilgamesh Epic, the great literary work of ancient Mesopotamia, where Professor Arthur George, an expert on the subject, says, “What is the genre of the Gilgamesh Epic? Well, we can’t find a particular genre for it, simply because it draws on so many different sources. It is a great and original work that stands in its own class.” I think this is true of many works in literature; it’s impossible to pigeon hole them.


You mean it creates itself and then sets a standard for other subsequent works?

Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. For example, J. R. Tolkein’s work creates a whole genre of fantasy literature. I’m not saying Tolkein is the first to use fantasy in his writing, but in one sense his work was very original. It had a profound impact on other writers and created its own genre. I believe saying everything fits a genre simply doesn’t work for things like Genesis 1.

What basic indications in the text itself flag that it is an historical narrative?
One of the characteristics of biblical narrative (and there are all sorts of explanations for this) is that a verb form which is normally used for continuing present or future actions is used to describe past action. Further, this is done within a structure that signals to the reader that the past is being described. People have come up with all sorts of explanations from the original Semitic languages to explain this, but the important point is that it is characteristic of narrative within the biblical text. You find it in historical books like Genesis and in Kings and other places. In other words, the use of this verbal form in Genesis 1 to 11 indicates that we are dealing with historical narrative.


Is there any truth in the claim that Genesis 1 has been borrowed from ancient Babylonian or Egyptian creation accounts?

When you read a lot of the modern literature on the subject you get the impression that everyone in the ancient world wrote creation stories that were basically the same. That is simply not true. What is true is that there are three ancient cultures around the Bible for which we have really extensive literature. I’m referring of course to ancient Iraq, ancient Egypt and the Hittite kingdom in what is modern-day Turkey. There are a few other places where we have some literature on the subject, but certainly not enough to say that we have a fair picture of what that culture believed.


The first thing that we need to know is that there are no creation stories from the Hittites. I don’t know why they didn’t have any, but they didn’t. Not everybody felt a need to write creation stories.

The second thing we need to know is that while there are some allusions to creation in Egyptian sources, there is really no detailed account of creation except in an extremely mythological version. To get some idea of what the Egyptians meant by creation, you have to put together a number of texts to produce an Egyptian theology of origins, which might be producing something artificial and un-Egyptian. The important thing to remember is that there is no one complete Egyptian account of creation.

Ancient Iraq, or Mesopotamia, is the place that produced more creation stories. Hence people have tried to find parallels between them and the Bible. Basically, these accounts start with primal elements that are also gods, and they give different versions of how the world came to be. One late version involves a conflict between the gods. This account is called Enuma Elish, or the Babylonian creation story. The earliest Sumerian versions don’t refer to any primal conflict: they just say that initially undifferentiated matter existed and then certain gods took their bit of it and established the universe. 

Why do so many modern Biblical scholars suggest that there may be some dependence of Genesis upon Enuma Elish?
Many of them have naturalistic assumptions in their approach to the text of the Bible and they find it hard to believe in the notion of divine inspiration, that is, that the Bible comes directly from the mind of God. Driven by deistic or deterministic principles they try to find a naturalistic explanation for the Bible, which is a version of what existed in pagan cultures. However, there is not much to choose from as the possible prototype of Genesis 1. So it has to be Enuma Elish, even though it is quite different.


The major difference between the Genesis story of creation and Enuma Elish is that the Babylonian account starts with the assumption that the primal elements are also gods. The Bible takes an entirely different approach and draws a distinction between the created order and the Creator Himself.


Some scholars have said that the Genesis creation account is really just a polemic against idolatry and it really makes no claims about how God created the world in six days. What’s your view?
One of the fascinating characteristics of Genesis is its lack of polemic against idolatry. Of course, the rest of the Old Testament maintains a sustained attack against idolatry. However, Genesis hardly mentions it. It is mentioned in one or two places, such as the idolatry of the people of Shechem or when Rachel steals the teraphim from her father Laban (Gen. 31:9). We’re not exactly sure what the teraphim are. It seems as though they are some form of household god. However, it’s not until you get to the Ten Commandments that the Bible spells out its concern with idolatry. I think there is a purpose in that. The Bible is saying that the first thing that we must understand is that the world originated from the one God. Against this background, it’s hard to say that the central purpose of Genesis 1-11 is to attack idolatry. This only becomes clear when God gives His people the Ten Commandments.


Why do so many evangelical scholars claim that Genesis 1 is a major polemic against the false gods of the ancient world?

My own personal view is that this approach has come about so that many of them can accommodate the theory of evolution into their view of creation. Genesis 1, on the face of it, is a text which contradicts the modern scientific world view. If you want to overcome this collision of world views, then one way of doing it is to assert that Genesis 1 tells us nothing about how God created the world.

Are there any problems with the view that Genesis 1 and 2 represent two different accounts of creation?
The Bible, particularly in the narrative sections of the Old Testament, takes a different approach than us in the way that it writes history. One of the things it does is that when it tells a story it sometimes goes back and retells it in another way to bring out further details. Let me give you a very simple example. Do you remember the story of how Joshua took Jericho? In the first account in the book of Joshua, we’re told that the walls fall down and Israel goes in and takes the city and kills its inhabitants. However, in the following section of the narrative, Joshua says to the spies, “Go in and rescue Rahab and her family.” Now obviously, that is out of order, but the story is told this way to emphasize two different but vital truths. What the biblical text often does is it gives you one narrative and then another that covers the same time period, but which provides a different emphasis. Genesis 1 and 2 are just one example of this way in which the Bible uses historical narrative. There are many other instances in the Old Testament of this feature of Hebrew history writing.


How long are the days of Genesis 1? Could they be the standard day of 24 hours? Or is this just ridiculous in the light of modern science?
It all comes down to the way that the reader wants to approach Genesis. If we approach Genesis 1 as a simple account of Hebrew historical narrative, which incidentally seems to be the approach of the rest of Scripture, then the most nat- ural way to read the term “day” is as a normal simple day of 24 hours. This certainly seems to be the understanding of Moses in the Ten Commandments, where in the fourth commandment in which he mentions the Sabbath he says the creation week is a model of our seven-day week.

Frankly, if we read the text in its natural sense, we are left with the impression that normal days are intended. After all, when the texts says, “there was evening and there was morning – the first day”, and then repeats this refrain for each of the six days, I would have thought that the writer’s intent was to tell us that we are dealing with a normal 24-hour day. In the past some evangelicals have opted for the day-age theory, where days can mean thousands or millions of years. Well, all I can say is that life would have been pretty tough on earth if a night lasted several million years. One of the basic mechanisms of plant life on which animals and humans depend is photosynthesis. If a night lasted a long time, as some suggest, everything would die. This is one of the reasons why the “long day” theory gave way to the framework theory.

Does the Bible tell us how long ago the world was created? Is it true that we have historical records going back 7000 years BC?
The earliest historical records that we have, and here I mean written texts, go back to around 3400BC. (This is on con- ventional dating. There are huge problems in ancient chronology and we cannot be certain about dates that far back.) This earliest evidence comes from southern Iraq. Incidentally, we can’t read the text but it looks like writing. It’s not until about 3000BC or later that we can get anything that we can read, either from Iraq or Egypt. If you want to base evidence on things other than written texts, it gets rather difficult.


Is it possible to work out when the world began from the genealogy in Genesis 5?

It’s hard to say. It could represent a continuous unbroken link between the early generations. It certainly reads that way. However, we need to remember that it’s possible that the way the term “father” is used here leaves the question open. I am reluctant to be dogmatic on this issue, but I doubt, if there are gaps, that they are all that great. If we read the text in the natural sense in which it was written, my best guess is that the world is very young.

I know this doesn’t fit with modern evolutionary views, but we need to remember that all the theories relating to evolution are quite conjectural. I know it’s popular at the moment to read the text of Genesis in the light of theistic evolution, but such a reading of the text contradicts some clear statements in Genesis 1. Theistic evolution does not arise naturally out of a fair reading of the text; it’s based more on the fact that evolution is the dominant theory of our age.


Are there any good reasons to believe that the flood in Noah’s day was worldwide?
Yes, there are. Incidentally the flood is mentioned in the writings and traditions of many different cultures and is not only found in the Bible. One thing about the text in Genesis is clear: it tells us that, “The waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered” (Gen. 7:19). On the face of it, this reads as though it were more than a local flood. The prominent alternative explanation is that the text is referring to a local flood in the Tigris/Euphrates’ valley. However, in both the Mesopotamian flood accounts and the biblical narrative the ark ends up in the north. The problem is that floods always take things downstream. Floods never take objects upstream. If this was a normal flood in the Tigris/Euphrates’ region, the ark would have gone downstream. The fact that it landed in the north in a mountain range goes against any local flood theory.