Читать книгу The Genesis Cataclysm - W. Joseph Stallings - Страница 7

by Edward N. Martin

It is with anticipation and great pleasure that I once again offer these preparatory remarks to one of Joe Stallings’ books—this time, The Genesis Cataclysm. In this instance, one may note that in his previous work, The Genesis Column (Wipf & Stock, 2018), there is a small section of two or so pages entitled “The Timing of the Noahic Flood” found within its content (116–18). Joe has taken that small section, and expanded it into this current sizeable manuscript before the reader. I believe this means that, at the current rate, there are approximately fifty-five or so more books that he may (or may not) develop based on the various sections remaining in the 2018 book and this current offering. You may be hearing from me again soon!

In many ways, Joe’s couple of books here in the Genesis Series cover basic human concerns, e.g., of the possible consistency and consonance of two or more ideas or concepts, paradigms, or theories; the nature, limits, strictures, and conditions of human knowledge and justified belief; and the proper alignment of oneself and one’s being, in all its dimensions, with the great and bountiful gifts the Creator has bestowed so lovingly upon us. What are these gifts? Like the ancient Magi coming to adore the Christ Child (at least, according to tradition), as well as the parts of ancient Gaul, there are three.

First and foremost, there is the gift that we are: God has created us. Christian theologians have always held that God did not have to create at all; there was no inner necessity in the divine being that compelled God to create as he did. He would have been completely fulfilled and complete in his own blessed trinitological nature, filled and filling in paternal, filial, and pneumatic loving relationships.

Second, but even more, the fact that, in spite of our hateful rebellion against the Lord, still he loves us, and indeed, pours out his love to us through the bountiful life, ministry, teaching, death, resurrection and current co-ruling and co-reigning of our Lord Jesus Christ. God’s love to us is not satisfied with our mere being-in-the-world; he pays us, as C. S. Lewis tells us, the “intolerable compliment” of loving us, pursuing us, causing us (if we will but agree to it and say “Yes, Father”) to become more than we could ever imagine ourselves to be.

Third, along with these great, supererogatory gifts, we also have this gift: that of being made in God’s image, of having the capacities of possibly loving him, along with the capacities of thinking—even pondering—wondering, imagining and conceiving, researching and discovering, philosophizing and theologizing, remembering, reasoning, believing, doubting and knowing, deliberating and choosing, introspecting, dreaming, playing, composing, writing, recounting and narrating (e.g. of history), preferring, being useful and resourceful for others, and being social and moral beings who can bring God praise, worship and adoration. In order for humans to be and to do—to participate in (a richly Platonic concept)—the full array of personhood with which God has made us, we have to have some way to be located at a somewhere and a somewhen, and to be distinguishable one person from another, yet re-identifiable as the same person over those somewhens. “A body he has prepared” for us. These embodied persons he has placed in a common, shared space, which we call our world. Before God could ever make us, he made the world first to provide us with a suitable environment, full of other living things, and incredibly, space and time, causality and regularity of law and action—a real world in which to live and move and have our being.

Once having created us, a part of God’s package-deal is that he would reveal himself to us. For, if he loves us with an unremitting love, and knows that there is no other way available by which we can be happy but by the knowledge and satisfaction of knowing God, he must show himself to us. How does a spiritual being like our Father do that when we are material beings whose atmosphere is that of a planet with a real live history and dynamic past, present and future?

Into that lawlike atmosphere, God gave us a revelation of himself, and even caused these truths to be written down through his “God-breathed” manifestation of himself by forty different authors over a 2000-year period, giving us in time what we would have as the completed Holy Scriptures.

But there is a problem: our rebellious sin has led to separation from God and to death. Who will save us from this bondage of sin and death? But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom 7:24–25)

When one combines these above elements, one comes to understand what Joe gives us in this book: a desire that we humans have to take God’s sure revelation and to understand it in light of our shared empirically real world. How do we as humans understand our present and our future, still to be revealed? The past. We have to look to the past to receive and appreciate God’s revelation to us in the Bible.

I am very pleased to inform the reader that Joe has, as a matter of Christian conviction, made it a priority—indeed, an apriority—to see that God’s Word comes first no matter what theories we may entertain or construct concerning models of the past. In the book before the reader, Joe makes it his point of departure that God’s Word must determine the boundaries of any acceptable model of the Flood spoken of in Genesis 6–8. And Joe gives us a lot of cogent reasoning about why we should believe that the Bible speaks of a universal Flood event. Even if in the flurry of data to be considered there are some inconsistent accounts—and there are and will be—still, God says that the universal Flood is real, that it happened in real space-time history, that it is a part of complete Christian orthodoxy to believe this—without which other doctrines will not make complete sense.

But when did the Flood occur? Joe here takes these God-bestowed gifts above of reasoning, reflection, theologizing and philosophizing, and creates a paradigm for our consideration which says that Scripture must be first; and, there are some good reasons to think that the scriptural evidence for a universal Flood is plausibly consistent with what we do see in science. If all truth is God’s truth, we expect and hope for a coherence, a consistency. But can we make consistent an OEC view of the days of creation—and of a universal Flood event? I welcome you to Joe’s offering. It is a great read and great challenge that all believers need to study and consider. This book fills a niche in a unique way in the literature, and I hope the reader will strap in and appreciate the ride! Joe is to be commended for his patient and balanced treatment of a wide array of excellent sources and compelling arguments. A treat awaits you!

Edward N. Martin, PhD

Professor and Chair of Philosophy

Liberty University

Lynchburg, Virginia