Chapter
7 – Realising History
Adah
gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents
and raise livestock. His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father
of all who play the harp and flute. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain,
who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron. (Gen
4:20-22)
Chapter
7 Contents
7.1
Thinking about History, Revelation of God and Development of Mankind
7.2
The Reasonableness of this World View and some Analogies
7.3
Considering Changes in Mankind's Development
7.4
The Logical Consequences of our Worldview
7.5
Knowledge-Filled from the start, or Gradual Learning?
7.6
A Brief Sketch of the Gradual Development of Mankind
| The
Heart of Chapter 7: A
world without God makes history accidental and pointless. A
world with God fits the outworking of the worldview of
history that is theistic. God would have had to make it a developing
world, and that we observe through history. |
7.1
Thinking about History,
Revelation of God and Development of Mankind
As
I have read or listened to atheists, sceptics and doubters of the
Bible in general, one thing has become clear to me. Many of us don't
appreciate history and haven't thought about some of the obvious conclusions
about history, especially as it relates to what the Bible says.
In
some modern writing, there often appears strong criticism of Biblical
things far back in history.
There
is often a derisory note about a God who would make an imperfect
world, and how primitive man was unlikely to have been part
of God's plan, and as for dinosaur's????? |
Would
God have made a primitive man? |
It
is only as we start thinking about these issues that we start thinking
about:
- why
God made the world in the way He did, (this chapter) and
- why
He revealed Himself in the way He did (the following chapter).
Remember,
these are just foundation stones to bring wider understanding on which
to view the activities of the Old Testament, which are our central
and eventual focus.
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7.2
The Reasonableness of this World View and some Analogies
Already
in what we have just said, I have accepted the Bible's declaration
that God is the Creator of all things. My objective
is not to defend that proposition but simply to show that
the world view that holds that proposition is reasonable and logical
as far as the consequences of it are concerned .
It
follows that if God did bring the world into being (however it happened)
and brought it into being with purpose, so that it developed and changed
(humanity at the very least), then He is all-knowing and all-powerful.
Now
this, for this part of the discussion, has some very important
repercussions. Before we continue, we need to pose some examples
that are analogies of what happened or, to be more precise,
why it happened as it did.
|
We
need to use analogies of family life to understand |
Analogies
of Family Life
Imagine,
for a moment, a very strong and very clever, knowledgeable and wise
man, who has a son who has just had his third birthday. As much as
he may wish, he is unable to communicate all of his knowledge and
understanding to that child at this moment while the child is just
three.
| A
child does not have the intellectual capability to understand
the adult's knowledge of life. |
However
much he tells him, the child will not be able to understand
it because he simply does not yet have the intellectual capability
to handle it. Similarly if the man wanted to teach him woodwork,
or perhaps flying, he would again be utterly frustrated if
he tried because, again, the child just does not have the
physical or mental capabilities to learn these things yet.
It's a bit obvious isn't it!
|
Now
let's try another analogy. Imagine this same man is an ironmonger
and runs an ironmonger's store in a small town. He hopes one day that
his three year old son will grow up and eventually take over and run
the store when his father has become too old.
If you want a simple little intellectual
exercise, sit down for half an hour and list all the things
that the son will need to learn between now and when he runs
the shop on his own when he is grown up. It's a big exercise
and there are an incredible number of things he has got to learn
from the age of three upwards to be able to handle that job
– and that is far from being the most complex of jobs in modern
society! |
Exercise:
Think
what we have to learn between being a baby and becoming an
adult.
|
If you bother to do that exercise you will note that almost certainly
you will start from simple basic things like learning language and
simple adding up and taking away and gradually make the learning more
and more complex, just like we do in school. One thing follows another
or, to put it another way, some things have to come first otherwise
later knowledge will make no sense.
Now
these analogies are far from perfect but, I suggest, they do point
us in the right direction for thinking about why God made us as we
are, why we have taken millennia to develop and why He held back revealing
Himself in the manner He has done.
Trying
to Catch the Big Picture
Some
of us may be very bright people and think we have taken on board an
immense amount of knowledge but one thing the modern world has done
has been to show us the enormity of knowledge that is ‘out there'
and therefore how little the amount is that we actually have. God,
we have said, is unrestricted by knowledge; He knows everything. (That's
the Bible's teaching.) Take the knowledge of every scientist, every
college professor, every philosopher and every technologist, put it
all together and God still knows infinitely more!
The
Bible indicates that the extent of God's knowledge includes
the immediate knowledge of every atom or molecule in existence,
where it is and what it is doing. Is your idea of God breaking
free from the doddering old man conveyed by atheistic writers
who want to make Him appear foolish? |
Can
you grasp something of the greatness of God's mind? |
Are you starting to catch something of this personality we call God?
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7.3
Considering Changes in Mankind's Development
We
can focus this subject by suggesting two very important and significant
starting points that many of us seem to have never thought about,
or have taken for granted:
1.
Mankind has developed or evolved in knowledge, understanding
and ability to where we are today.
- This
is regardless of whether we believe in evolution or not,
- this
is clearly observable over the past five to ten thousand years,
and
- there
are reasons for that, which are quite logical. (The child and learning
in the analogies above)
2.
God who is all-knowing, has always existed, and is unchanging,
but has only gradually revealed Himself to the human race.
- This
is the father in the analogies above.
- This
is the clearly repeated statement of the whole Bible which we need
to note if we are to understand this world view.
In
the next chapter we will reconsider these in the light of the gradual
revelation of God that we see in the Bible. However, I pick these
out now to focus the questions that I sometimes hear asked in respect
of history generally:
- Why
Did God make (IF He did) primitive man with hardly any knowledge
so that life was so harsh?
- Why
didn't God input knowledge into mankind so that it ‘jumped' the
primitive stage and all the difficulties that went with that period?
To
those we might add (in the next chapter) why didn't God reveal Himself
to mankind as a whole from the start?
These
are genuine questions that thinking people might ask.
In
this chapter I intend to focus on the first of these two starting
points that I have noted above, about the development of mankind,
so we may see the reality of, and the necessity of, ‘gradual revelation'
whether it be of knowledge of how the world works (this chapter) or
of God Himself (the following chapter).
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7.4
The Logical Consequences of our Worldview
It
is worth noting in passing that, as we have noted above, the Bible
is blatant is ascribing to God the role of Creator. It doesn't tell
us how He created the world and in fact we are given only broad brush
stroke descriptions.
This
means we end up with debates about:
- whether
the world was brought about by pure-chance evolution (which
excludes God, and leaves us with a meaningless and purposeless existence),
or
- whether
God brought it about by directed evolution (i.e. the chances
weren't chances but God's way of moving from simple cell to complex
organisms etc.),
or some other alternative.
Some
believers even desperately put forward the idea that God made everything
about five thousand years ago, complete with fossils etc. to give
an appearance of great age. Well of course such a thing is possible
but somewhat unlikely (wait to you get to heaven for the definitive
answer!).
One
thing we may say: if God made the world and it was made with
purpose, then it is not just a product of random chance. If
it was purely random chance evolution, then there would be no
such things as ‘meaning' or ‘significance' that so many of us
hold so much store by - it's all just chance – and don't let
any evolutionary biologist con you into thinking that there
was some mysterious factor driving it all on. |
If
God DID make the world, then there is PURPOSE and MEANING to
life. |
Those
are the usual lines of debate which we aren't going to follow here.
We have a much more specific goal in mind but it is vitally important
to hold in mind the two world views and the consequences that flow
from them:
- if
there IS a God there are some logical consequences to be observed,
and
- if
there is NO God, then the development of mankind is a meaningless,
accidental chain of events which leaves us today with a lot of knowledge
but no meaning.
Remember
a comment we made previously: My objective is not to defend the proposition
that God made the world, but simply to show that
this world view is reasonable and logical as far as the consequences
of it are concerned .
When
our atheist friends deride God making a ‘primitive' world which, they
say, is much more likely to have come about naturally, they are in
fact, without realising it, deriding the almost only alternative logical
option. Remember, this is all about having God in the equation to
make sense of what is. Let's explain.
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7.5
Knowledge-Filled from the start, or Gradual Learning?
In
this line of thinking, as we've hinted at already, there are
really only two likely possibilities for the world
being like it is today if God is involved.
|
Think
Possibilities |
Now
please remember that I am not defending purposeless evolution against
God-directed evolution or God directed ‘Creation'.
I
am simply emphasising the ONLY possibilities IF God was involved
in making the world in such a way that it ends up like it is today.
I do this because the criticisms that are made are made against
God are usually because of what sceptics say are conflicts between
what the Bible indicates He has done and what history records. Remember
these aren't alternatives of what was but what theoretically
could have been.
Option
1: A Theoretically Unlikely Alternative
| God
makes man as fully developed in thinking as modern man
is, so that he didn't have to learn, and he didn't have to gradually
develop. |
- Please
see this: this is the only possible alternative to what the
way the Bible describes God making the world.
- The
main difficulty of this option, is in respect of questions about
how much knowledge to implant in us.
- Why
start at any other particular point in the developmental path?
- The
most obvious starting point is at the point of zero knowledge.
- The
other difficulty would have been how to create the structure of
civilisation as developed today for we perhaps take for granted
that one invention follows another and one facet of society's development
follows another (see the comments on learning above).
Option
2: The Biblical & Historical Picture
| God
created primitive man and allowed and encouraged man to
gradually develop in all the ways archaeology suggests. |
- Thus
from the outset there is the concept of development – development
that is slow and gradual – because learning is always that, invention
is always that.
- Remember
the only alternative to this is to have mankind dropped onto this
planet as fully developed, and my atheistic friends would object
to that, so let's think about this one, the gradual development
scenario.
- When
we consider the concept of mankind being made “in the image of God”
and the things we saw in chapter 4 that express that - the abilities
to communicate, think, plan, reason, invent, create, write,
work, order, purpose and enter into the fullness of what
they were designed to be, or put another way, the abilities of self-consciousness,
imagination and conscience, and ability to grow and develop
– these fit perfectly that required for a basic start followed by
a gradual development.
- In Genesis 4:20-22 we have brief
clues as to development: basic farming, use of muscial instruments,
forging tools of bronze and iron. Bearing in mind these individuals
lived long lives, we may be talking about long periods of development.
Unclear but interesting, but there is development!
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7.6
A Brief Sketch of the Gradual Development of Mankind
We
take this so much for granted, that we don't even think much about
it – until we come to criticise God making a primitive human race.
For the moment we'll simply accept modern dating methods and, on that
basis, modern science suggests the following to us:
- (Dinosaurs
died out about 65 million years ago).
- From
about 100,000 years ago, modern theory has it, homo sapiens in the
form of Neanderthals lived. Modern theory says bigger skulls accommodating
bigger brains developed over millions of years, enabling man to perform
more complex tasks – see earlier comments about being “made in the
image of God”.
- About
30,000 year ago – first cave painting.
- The
last Ice Age, ended about 12,000 years ago – use of bone, antlers
and stone axes to hunt food.
- About
11,000 years ago – farmers grew crops & kept animals.
- About
6,000BC (8,000 years ago) – cradle of civilisation – Mesopotamia –
society developing (Eden was clearly identified as Mesopotamia, Abram
later came from Ur in Mesopotamia).
- From
about 3,500BC (5,500 years ago) – Bronze Age – metal working.
- About
3,200BC – writing on clay tablets in Mesopotamia.
- About
3,000BC (5,000 years ago) first towns built alongside rivers.
- About
same time, growth of Egyptian civilisation around the Nile.
- Ditto
– writing using hieroglyphics and writing on papyrus reeds.
- About
2,700BC first Chinese emperor – use of silk, medicines & writing.
- About
2000BC peak of Indus-Ganges civilisations.
- Ditto
Minoan civilisation on Crete peaked.
- about
1,950BC Abram moved to Canaan
- From
about 1,900BC growth of Babylonian culture in southern Mesopotamia
, with development of mathematics, science and law.
- About
1,600BC peak of Mycenaean (Greek) civilisation.
- About
1,300BC (3,300 years ago) – Iron Age – further metal working.
- About
1,280BC Moses led Israel out of Egypt into Canaan.
- About
1,050BC Saul was first king of Israel.
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7.7
Some Concluding Thoughts
In
Chapter 2, in listing those things that theologians consider
are some of the characteristics of every human being ‘made
in the image of God', we noted that we have the abilities
to think, plan, reason, invent, create, etc.
We have developed BECAUSE of these capabilities.
|
The
concept of 'in the image of God' explains how we developed |
The
above examples of scientific and technological developments (which
could be expanded a thousand times over) are a testimony to that truth.
We have what we have because we've been made like that by a benign
and loving God.
In
the history of scientific development, one thing HAD to go
before another
|
What
does become very apparent when we start thinking about such
developments, is that one thing had to go before another. Before
we were capable of completing the Human Genome project, for
example, thousands of other developments had to come first.
Working back from that, to produce a complete picture, we would
have to work right back to the point where ‘man' had no knowledge
of how the world worked, i.e. primitive man. |
| |
It is, therefore, logical for humanity to have been formed and developed
in this manner.
To
ridicule the Creator for making man primitive indicates a failure
to think through these issues. The alternative, that God should input
knowledge and understanding into ‘primitive man' to jump the learning
process is quite unbelievable, but is the only option that the deriding
atheist would be left with. No, God creating mankind so that we gradually
learn and gradually develop is quite logical and consistent with observable
history.
The
next step is to observe how God reveals Himself to mankind, and again
it is quite logical that He does it slowly and gradually and progressively,
and that forms the content of our next chapter. It is also worth observing
here, that what we are going to be considering as evidence, is history
that we see recorded on the pages of the Bible. The records of this
history, experts tell us, are as valid as any other part of ancient
history, so they deserve our investigation. So, let's move on to the
next chapter, to observe just how God revealed Himself as seen in
the early pages of the Old Testament.
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7.8
Recap
The
following are the things we have considered in this chapter:
| |
7.1
Thinking about History, Revelation of God and Development of
Mankind
7.2
The Reasonableness of this World View and some Analogies
7.3
Considering Changes in Mankind's Development
7.4
The Logical Consequences of our Worldview
7.5
Knowledge-Filled from the start, or Gradual Learning?
7.6
A Brief Sketch of some of the Developments of Mankind
7.7
Some Concluding Thoughts
|
|
Our
purpose in this chapter is simply to observe that if God created mankind
as separate and distinct from the animals, creatures “made in His
image” that we considered in a previous chapter, then developing from
primitive is the only logical approach, and this has a number of reasonable
and logical consequences which, again, are seen in history. Gradual
development is reasonable.
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