Yesterday I posted some thoughts concerning the concept of "subdue" and how we can subtly seek to subdue God through our theologies (i.e., our thoughts and speech about who God is and how he acts). In this post, I would like to highlight some of Roland E. Osborne's thoughts form his recent book Death before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Animal Suffering that I think dovetail well or at least illustrate well my intentions yesterday. In Death before the Fall, Osborne argues forcefully (and at times a bit too polemically for my taste) against what he terms "'Scientific' Creationism," which is a union of biblical literalism and modern creationism--what Osborne more accurately terms "concordism." He notes that the enterprise of "scientific creationism" is "any approach to the Bible that treats the creation story in Genesis 1 as a chronological-historical account that should be used to coordinate and explain scientific and historical data" (40). With that definition in mind listen to the list of perils Osborne sees with such a reading:
The perils posed by "scientific" creationism and dogmatically literalistic readings of Genesis to a vibrant Christian faith . . . The hazards are not only hermeneutical (the danger of doing violence to the "plain" meaning of the text in the name of defending it); philosophical (the danger of overcommitment to an outmoded, thoroughly modernist ontology and foundationalist epistemology); sociological (the danger of answering challenges to one's worldview not with intellectual honesty and careful foresight but with simplistic slogans, fideistic dismissals of difficult evidence, and the exclusionary praxis of fundamentalism); psychological (the danger of destroying the vary possibility of a rigorous discipleship of the mind by shutting down pathways of investigation before they have been fully explored, leading to foreclosure and premature integrity). There is another very real danger in fundamentalist forms of creationism, and that is the spiritual danger fundamentalism poses to fundamentalist themselves. Christ warned his disciples in the strongest possible terms of the ironic reversal that occurs when individuals set themselves up as spiritual judges over others (Mt 7:1-5). In their zeal to define others out of the life of Christian faith (or out of their particular enclaves of true belief), fundamentalist creationists themselves can quickly come to exhibit all the marks of a very ancient heresy (86).
Osborne goes on to identify this ancient heresy as gnosticism and he enumerates a substantial list of similar characteristics between ancient gnosticism and "scientific creation." I'm not necessarily agreeing in toto with Osborne's analysis although there is much in his analysis to be commended. However, I think "scientific creationism" illustrates well the type of theological cages we can erect around God in a futile attempt to domesticate him. And Osborne notes well the dangers such a reading can pose. Food for thought. Food for thought indeed!
BD
P.S. Before anyone gets their undies in a twist and illustrates Osborne's point, let me say this . . . I don't think everyone who may read Genesis 1 as an historical account of creation in seven 24 hour days falls within Osborne's analysis, but many do (maybe most, who can tell) and his work should be a cause for reflection and possibly reappraisal. At the very least, the dangers he list should press one toward introspection.
BD
P.S. Before anyone gets their undies in a twist and illustrates Osborne's point, let me say this . . . I don't think everyone who may read Genesis 1 as an historical account of creation in seven 24 hour days falls within Osborne's analysis, but many do (maybe most, who can tell) and his work should be a cause for reflection and possibly reappraisal. At the very least, the dangers he list should press one toward introspection.