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Responding to “Recovering a Creation Mythology” November 24, 2008 By John Martin Introduction The year 2009 marks the 150th birthday of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. Darwin's book
is responsible for promoting the theory of biological evolution
to acceptability in all academic settings including areas of theology,
sociology and psychology. Soon after Darwin's work almost all major
theological seminaries and universities would embrace Darwin's teachings
as ingenious while at the same time compromising the authority of
the Bible. With the beginning of Oneness Pentecostal's first seminary,
Urshan Graduate School of Theology, professors and students will
visit and revisit the importance of science and religion and what
it means within an Oneness Pentecostal Hermeneutic. Oneness Pentecostals
not only revere biblical accounts of the supernatural but also claim
miracles, glossalia occur today just as in scriptural accounts. This response is to Josh Remington's “Recovering a Creation Mythology: Reading Genesis in the 21st Century” paper presented to the 2008 Urshan Graduate School of Theology Symposium. It is pertinent in any theological paper that the writer's bias and presuppositions be established. As recognized from the title, the creation narrative is witnessed in the hermeneutical lens of allegory in light of ancient pagan cultures. While there are elements of allegory obvious in the scriptures, this response will maintain that Genesis chapters 1 and 2 represent narration prose as opposed to poetic allegory. This recognition will be based upon a grammatical historical interpretation of the Bible which is also the basic Oneness Pentecostal hermeneutic in the areas of theism, Christology and soteriology. After briefly reviewing Oneness Pentecostal views of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 a more particular examination of “Recovering a Creation Mythology,”
will be explored. How have classical and Oneness Pentecostals interpreted Genesis? In the past
few decades, there has been a trend among Evangelical scholars of
deconstructing the supernatural events of Genesis such as the immediate
creation of Adam and Eve, the Genesis flood, dispersion of language
groups at Babel. This trend does not suggest the Bible is errant
in the manner of liberal Christianity interpreters, yet it does
reinterpret passages, phrases and words from their original intent.
Beginning in the nineteenth century Evangelical Christians sought
to harmonize interpretations of creationism that compliment scientific
presumptions about the antiquity of the Universe. Many fundamentalist
and evangelical theologies have traditionally held strong appeal
to Oneness Pentecostals because of their inerrant view of scripture.
Like mainline evangelicals, Oneness Pentecostals exegete Genesis
and the rest of the Bible differently than liberal theologians.
Conservative exegesis entails looking at Hebrew word usage and understanding
the genre. In retaining a historical view of scripture it is important
to acquire a sense of how the original recipients would have understood
the text when they received it. In regard to the Old Testament there
is an advantage to this principal within New Testament passages.
Both understanding the exegesis and historical context has been
“coined” the grammatical historical method of interpretation and
this is the method used by Oneness Pentecostals. An example of the Grammatical Historical Interpretation for Oneness Pentecostals
has been the recognition that Jews were commanded to have no other
Gods before them. Early Christians would have honored this principal
by retaining its essential truth in Christology. Oneness Pentecostals
believe that Trinitarian concepts of God were imposed upon the scriptures
as a result of Hellenistic influences through Greek philosophies
about God. Likewise there should be a concern for allowing literary
criticism and evolutionary science to be imposed on creation narratives
of the Old Testament. Among Oneness Pentecostals, there are a variety of interpretations of the Genesis creation narrative.1 While different, unlike creation mythology language, all of these ideas are based upon a strong belief in the inerrancy of Scripture. Former students from Conquers Bible College, Gateway College of Evangelism, and Jackson College of Ministries remember explanations of interpreting Genesis from a ruin-reconstruction or gap theory view. Students of G.T. Haywood in Indianapolis and S.G. Norris in St. Paul heard a concordant interpretation or a day age theory stating that each creative day lasted 7,000 years.
Darlene Kantola of Portland Oregon in the 1980s, taught her students
the doctrine of young earth creationism and Arlo Moehlenpah taught
the same to students in Stockton, California shortly thereafter. How could such
divergent views of Genesis creation story be consistent within the
grammatical historical context? The consistent answer is found in
the doctrine of special immediate creation. The various views of
what a day represented in Genesis is explained in the realm of propositional
truth. In a like manner,
Oneness Pentecostals have traditionally given credence to a special
creation message in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. Poetic allegory or
mythology language was known to them but they shunned it in favor
of God's immediate creative acts. A Simple Critique Perhaps if I were a liberal theologian who did not subscribe to the verbal plenary inspiration of the original autographs in scripture, I would bring accolades to this paper. The title “Recovering a Creation Mythology: Reading Genesis in the 21st Century”2, RCM, shows a
presupposition that the original intent of Genesis is that of a
story just like other ancient Eastern myths. Only over halfway through
the paper the reader sees the author's intent of conveying the notion
that Genesis creation myth (sic) is better than all other ancient
creation myths.3
While
it is understood why the author chose 'myth' over poetic allegory,
both concepts can be criticized in a similar manner. Myth language
is common in liberal theology and is welcomed by many archaeologists
and historians in comparing and contrasting ancient cultures.4
Liberal
Evangelical scholars have popularized poetic allegory language in
recent years to demonstrate Genesis veracity but also it's harmony
with evolutionary science. In the first
portion of RCM, the author shares his desire to create an option
of interpreting Genesis other than science, namely mythology. Most
Oneness Pentecostal and conservative Evangelical scholars would
suggest that there is a third consideration and that being special
immediate creation of inorganic and organic matter in a form similar
to what is observed today. By presupposing that mythology language
by-passes science, the author overlooks that even in mythology there
is the presupposition of an intelligent creator that not only ordered
creation but caused life. This presupposition is in fact a scientific
claim. RCM follows
an assumption that early recipients knew that Genesis was just another
mythological story. One statement reads the early Jews “were concerned
more with the truth about God than they were with precisely recording
events”. There is no evidence in the Bible that myth was their interpretive
style. On the contrary, we read the importance of observation that
God ordered seven days as an example for His people today. Exodus
20:9-11 states the fourth commandment of God. Six days shalt
thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the Sabbath
of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor
thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant,
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in
six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in
them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed
the Sabbath day, and hallowed it. It is significant
that these commandments were written on stone tablets by God Himself
for Moses to present to His people. By ignoring the creation in
six days, RCM states that the significance of Genesis' account is
in the idea that God creates by separating, naming, and assigning
function. Once again event
these statements are scientific. Separating light and darkness is
a scientific process, separating land and water is a scientific
process which involves hydrology, oceanography. Assigning function
to animals is a scientific process involving physiology and animal
behavior. Modern science quickly dismisses these claims just as
they would dismiss a special immediate creation doctrine. RCM makes claims
that Genesis speaks of chaos as described in an earth without form
and void. While there are indeed ancient stories that depict a monster
called chaos, it is an unwarranted associative claim that Genesis'
account borrowed from this language. On the contrary a conservative
observation would be that the converse is true. I am concerned in
RCM imposes ancient myth of chaos on scripture. Chaos is looked
upon as an equal opposing force to God, not unlike the Chinese Yin
and Yang. A conservative approach to the scriptures discovers that
God is vastly superior to evil. In conclusion
I think RCM does remind us that there is merit in observation of
ancient creation mythologies, however a grammatical historical interpretation
demands for a more conservative approach to Genesis 1 and 2. Debates
will occur whether a day refers to a literal 24 hour period of time
or something else. If one passage is regarded as myth or even allegory
in the book of Genesis then what is the hermeneutical principal
to assure that other essential doctrines are retained in integrity? © 2008, John
Martin ----- John Martin
recently graduated from the Urshan Graduate School of Theology Footnotes 1. It is recognized that some focus on Genesis 1; 2:1-3 as a separate creation story from Genesis 2:4-25. Jesus however combined both of these portions by quoting from each of them in the same passage Mark 10:6-7; Matt. 19:4-5. 2. The title will be referred to as RCM through the remainder of this paper. 3. Just after footnote 40 the phrase is observed, “the Genesis myth makes a dramatic break from other ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies.” 4. The author states “In literary and anthropological understanding, a myth is a story that communicates truth, often a truth about the way the world is or why societies and religions are structured how they are.”
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