This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 556: Recruiting Ancients for the Creation Debate with Andrew J. Brown This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. 08 Sean Finnegan Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. 00:24 Sean Finnegan: Christians have approached the 1st Chapter of Genesis differently over the centuries. There are those who hold to young Earth creationism day, age theory, gap theory, and progressive creationism, just to name a few. Oftentimes, defenders of a particular view will provide biblical, scientific, and historical evidence. 00:45 Sean Finnegan: For their position, our focus today is on the use of church history to find witnesses for this or that view. 00:52 Sean Finnegan: Rather than cherry picking a quote here and a quote there, it's better to read ancient Christians in their own context. To be sure, we are interpreting them correctly. My guest today is Doctor Andrew Brown, a lecturer in Old Testament in Hebrew at Melbourne School of Theology. He did his thesis on the creation. 01:12 Sean Finnegan: Week in Genesis one and two, and has written a book called Recruiting the Ancients for the Creation debate. In today's episode, he shares his concerns and recommendations for handling our historical sources wisely. 01:25 Sean Finnegan: Here now is episode 556 recruiting Ancients for the creation debate with Professor Andrew Brown. 01:41 Sean Finnegan: Welcome to Restitutio, doctor Brown. So glad to have you today. 01:45 Andrew Brown: Yeah, thanks. Great to be. 01:46 Sean Finnegan: Here. So what got you interested in the creation debate in the first place? 01:50 Andrew Brown: I think I was raised in Christian circles where that was a hot issue and. 01:58 Andrew Brown: You're Probably aware that. 01:59 Andrew Brown: At least one of the creationist organisations found its beginnings here in Australia, and so that's been always a live issue in the more conservative Protestant church in Australia. 02:11 Andrew Brown: And I think combined with that. 02:14 Andrew Brown: As an early influence, I think I've always been interested in science. I used to collect minerals and gemstones as a young person and was always interested in things geological, so I always wanted to understand origins. 02:29 Andrew Brown: In a physical sense and continue to enjoy thinking about kind of Earth history and very attracted to that, but also wanting to find a kind of a reconciled mind that is not bifurcated between the Bible on the one hand, and what I know of science on the other. 02:49 Sean Finnegan: I understand. Yeah. So you you don't want to have mutually exclusive spheres of knowledge that never. 02:56 Sean Finnegan: Touch each other. You want to be an integrated, holistic individual. That's admirable. I think that makes sense. Sometimes I get frustrated with the critical scholars who do their scholarship, like on the historical Jesus, for example, and then they have the Christ of faith. And I'm I'm just like. 03:14 Sean Finnegan: But you're one person. Like, what do you what are you doing? But I hear what you're saying. 03:20 Andrew Brown: Yes, when you are pastorally engaged with people and you know, like you, I've I've been a pastor at different phases of my life. Some of these artificial moves just won't wash with real Christians. 03:32 Sean Finnegan: Out with real people. Yeah. Yeah. You can sort of try to silo everything and then they ask that one penetrating question that cuts to the heart of the matter. So this book recruiting the ancients for the creation debate is not written in a vacuum. It's it's seeking to solve a problem. 03:49 Sean Finnegan: Can you talk about the problem that you see in the Christian debate that this book is seeking to answer? 03:55 Andrew Brown: Yeah. So it really tackles 1 aspect of the creation debate and that is really the quest for authority and the the quest in particular to go back into Christian history and find the great interpreters, the great thinkers, the great theologians and kind of harness them when this is being done badly to harness them. 04:16 Andrew Brown: For the cause, yeah. Usually on the cause of literal interpretation of the creation accounts. 04:18 You know. 04:24 Or. 04:25 Andrew Brown: Else, against literal interpretation, you know, for a figurative interpretation, but a a little bit too quickly, you know, cherry picking attitude to try and grab some outstanding figures for for my cause against the against the opposition, and sometimes just list their names. 04:44 Andrew Brown: In a stack I've got Augustin and Calvin and Luther on my side. Or you know if Augustin was still alive. I'm pretty sure he'd agree with. 04:52 Andrew Brown: Me and so in part it's a plea to do the historical side of that better to be better historians and to allow these admittedly really important figures. 05:07 Andrew Brown: To make sense in their own context, and that involves a bit more hard work of understanding that come. 05:12 Andrew Brown: Next and then not just grabbing a sound bite from their texts, but really trying to understand what their texts are doing in their situation. So better hermeneutics and better historiography. 05:25 Sean Finnegan: Yeah. 05:26 Sean Finnegan: Seems like you've been influenced a lot by apologetics, even though that's not really your field. Your book is seemingly a corrective to bad apologetics, I guess is what? 05:37 Sean Finnegan: Picking up. 05:37 Andrew Brown: Yes, that's right. And I I really I get impatient sometimes with poor apologetics. 05:43 Sean Finnegan: Yeah. 05:44 Andrew Brown: Yeah, which even comes out in my teaching role here and my colleagues, we sort of encounter that from time to time from students who think they've really got a crushing argument that ends all debates. And often we feel that there's some reason why it's not. 05:58 Andrew Brown: Quite such a. 05:59 Andrew Brown: Conclusive argument, but really, we don't want our apologetics to override our. 06:06 Andrew Brown: Integrity in dealing with the witness of the past and the great interpreters of Scripture, we really want to let them say what they're trying to say first of all and try and understand why that makes sense in their context. 06:20 Andrew Brown: And really come to terms with the fact that these questions change and these contexts change, and maybe some of the things that leading figures from early church history are talking about, maybe they're simply not our issues anymore. And yet we can often find. 06:33 Yeah. 06:36 Andrew Brown: Wisdom that survives across the. 06:39 Andrew Brown: Ages because these great figures have stood the test of time. They've proved to be really significant and profound. 06:46 Sean Finnegan: Yeah, yeah, I like where you land and this idea of visiting as opposed to recruiting, you actually use the word lasso at one point, which I thought was hysterical. And it's just sort of this vivid image. 07:00 Sean Finnegan: Of wrapping your rope around somebody in antiquity and just yanking them into the modern time to testify on behalf of your particular theory of interpreting Genesis one, it strikes me as somewhat unusual that you, being an Old Testament scholar. 07:20 Sean Finnegan: Have done so much work on church history. These there are two fields that don't typically join hands. What what sets you on that course? 07:29 Andrew Brown: Yes, this does have a fair bit to do with the direction that my supervisors steered. 07:37 Andrew Brown: In way back when I was doing my PhD studies at the University of Queensland. It's funny, I think they were a bit afraid that I was a fundamentalist and they steered me. I think initially in a history of interpretation, direction to create. I think what they felt was another degree of safety in what I might come out. 07:59 Andrew Brown: In my PhD so that I I would be standing back and observing a bit more and and not kind of doing too much damage. 08:08 Andrew Brown: But I'm not sure that they had read me right there, but I really loved the exercise in the end of discovering the history interpretation because it has a way of really contextualizing your own views of what's going on. And it really became a study in different periods of history of. 08:28 Andrew Brown: Some of the great trends that it became for me, a sample of the. 08:31 Andrew Brown: History. 08:32 Andrew Brown: Of science. You know, the the rise of the of the modern sciences and how that happened in the European context. 08:40 Andrew Brown: So it was genuinely interdisciplinary. Yeah. And I think of my course of research as existing at the boundary of Old Testament studies and biblical hermeneutics, history of science, history of philosophy, and these current discussions about origins. 08:58 Sean Finnegan: Yeah, arguably apologetics as well, yeah. 08:59 Andrew Brown: Do you feel surprised? 09:01 Andrew Brown: Yes. Yeah, that's right. So I do feel that that is quite an interdisciplinary academic existence, but this is actually an era when. 09:13 Andrew Brown: Everyone's trying to get out of their silos and create breaches between them, so it's actually a rather timely time to be interdisciplinary in some ways, yeah, but it does have the challenge of trying to achieve competence in multiple fields, and it's hard enough to achieve competence in one academic field. It's dangerous. 09:33 Andrew Brown: To think that you can do it across three or four sometimes. 09:36 Sean Finnegan: Well, I mean, even just within history, the people who do patristic history. 09:42 Sean Finnegan: Versus medieval reformation or modern? You know, these are all different, totally different fields within church history, which which is its own separate field from Old Testament studies, you know. And then you have the the philosophy of science or history of the philosophy of science or something like that, which is. 10:02 Sean Finnegan: Really its own thing too. 10:04 Sean Finnegan: So yeah, you've you've had to do. 10:07 Sean Finnegan: An immense amount of read. 10:09 Sean Finnegan: If I if I'm to believe your approach in this book, which is stop cherry picking, read big chunks, then I'm thinking that you have read big chunks and so this is a very time consuming and laborious approach. I wonder if you could speak about method a little bit. How did you? 10:29 Sean Finnegan: Sort out your research project to arrive at what you accomplished. 10:33 Andrew Brown: Here. Yes. So this second book was more focused in certain ways than the first one. The first one was attempting to be comprehensive, and I got the feeling almost that I was a little bit like those astronomers whose new telescopes can see a lot more universe. 10:48 Andrew Brown: And yet, knowing that the observable universe is limited by the speed of light in this expanding sphere, and really this research felt like that you're pursuing the cutting edge of research, but it's retreating from you faster than you're capable of pursuing it. But the second book, the fact. 11:08 Andrew Brown: That the figures mentioned needed to feature as authorities in the creation debate. 11:15 Andrew Brown: It allowed me to restrict myself to better known figures and then to try to focus on them more carefully and and master them better. So there was a selective principle at work there that helped me and also made sure that relevance remained a criterion here, you know, so. 11:35 Andrew Brown: This is more about the people that people have heard of rather than the you're an interesting side figures. 11:41 Sean Finnegan: Yeah. Which just gonna be real transparent here. I appreciate. I appreciate it when people do scholarly work on those who have info. 11:46 Andrew Brown: Yes. Yeah, that's right. 11:52 Sean Finnegan: Nuance in the world in which I currently live obscure individuals from history are fascinating as well, but they often haven't had a bearing on how people especially argue these kinds of questions, rightly or wrongly. So obviously we can't cover the whole book in this conversation, but. 12:12 Sean Finnegan: I wonder if you could just dip your toes into the anti Nicene period. You know, just that first little chunk and tell us what were people. What were Christians saying about creation? What way could you summarize that a little? 12:24 Sean Finnegan: Bit for us. 12:25 Andrew Brown: Yes. 12:26 Andrew Brown: I think when you. 12:28 Andrew Brown: Get to know those early figs. 12:29 Andrew Brown: Is. 12:30 Andrew Brown: You early on realise that they're not asking the kinds of questions that we're asking. 12:36 Andrew Brown: They're really not very interested in the rise of physical creation for its own sake, the way that even I myself AM and and in a way, our generation is. So when they read early Genesis, they're often reading for establishing Trinitarian relations. 12:56 Andrew Brown: Or christology. Interested in Christ's role in creation, but not really interested in the history of physical. 13:04 Andrew Brown: And, but thinking ontologically thinking in terms of the categories of reality, not much of A sense of the flow of time, but certainly, how do we end up with a physical world and you know, Christ as the logos? 13:21 Andrew Brown: Really. In Colossians, one sort of terms undergirds reality is is kind of the realization of the plan. 13:32 Andrew Brown: Of God for existence. 13:35 Andrew Brown: And so then, you know, the incarnation of Christ is is the final great act of the logos, you know, to to be in fleshed in this world that is really attributable to the logos. It's this logos through whom God realises the world and then kind of incarnates himself within it. 13:55 Andrew Brown: Yeah. So it's not about, you know, how the hills formed and or you know trends in development of flora and fauna. It's really establishing philosophical and theological categories. So we have to come to terms with the fact that they're just not asking questions. We're asking 1 recognisable question that does kick in. 14:16 Andrew Brown: Over the first couple of centuries, is there a substrate, an original base matter? That is the substance with which God creates? 14:27 Andrew Brown: Or is even that impinging on the kind of distinction of God from the created world? And should we speak about creation out of nothing, so that takes a little while to kick in, but by about, you know, the 3rd century we're talking about creation out of nothing, so people would recognize that. 14:45 Sean Finnegan: Yeah, I remember reading some of this, randomly showing up and I I wasn't reading for the purpose of the creation debate or or whatever, but I remember accounting this word coeval. 14:56 Sean Finnegan: COEVAL and and that being very important to them. What? What's that all about? That creation is what the same age as God or eternal. Why did that matter? 15:06 Andrew Brown: Yeah. So it was basically a question whether there were there was one eternal principle or whether there were two. And even though someone like Justin, Martha, a very early figure, was comfortable to talk about a primordial matter that. 15:20 Andrew Brown: God could create. 15:20 It with. 15:22 Andrew Brown: And it even seemed as though one spot in wisdom of Solomon admitted that existence as theology was clarified. 15:32 Andrew Brown: And they were contending with dualist philosophies. You know, ideas that there were twin principles from the beginning and so forth. It was fairly important to really emphasise now that there is nothing that kind of competes with God's status by sharing his eternal. 15:48 Andrew Brown: Unity and so everything that's not God must be kind of profoundly originate, you know, profoundly, non eternal, including matter. 15:57 Sean Finnegan: Attention, would you say then that this idea of creation ex nihilo didn't really come up until a little later? When when did that come up? 16:06 Andrew Brown: Yeah. So, Justin Martin in the middle of the 2nd century is not really concerned about it, but it's beginning. 16:12 Andrew Brown: To be clarified. 16:13 Andrew Brown: On the cusp of the 3rd century there so. 16:16 Andrew Brown: Yeah, stuff her 200. 16:17 Sean Finnegan: That's and that's what the Alexandrian school or who were you thinking of in the 3rd century? 16:22 Andrew Brown: Yeah, I think you see a change in between Justin and Irenaeus. OK. But I think from memory and a quite early figure, Theophilus of Antioch, OK, was already talking about creation out of nothing from memory. 16:24 Sean Finnegan: Julian. 16:39 Sean Finnegan: Interesting. 16:42 Sean Finnegan: That's you're an Old Testament guy, and you probably know way more about this than I do. I wonder if you could give a couple of comments on Genesis 11. 16:51 Sean Finnegan: In reference to the whole issue of in the beginning God created versus when God began to create, you know, like I've, I've looked at the you're a Hebrew guy. So like, I looked at that. 17:03 Sean Finnegan: Hebrew like I. 17:03 Sean Finnegan: I don't see any indication really for this like subordinate clause approach, but I like it. It's interesting. 17:11 Sean Finnegan: And I take off the shelf my my Jewish translations of the Old Testament. It seems like they all go for the the subordinate clause intro, and so I'm just wondering if you can help me with that a little bit. 17:20 Yes. 17:24 Andrew Brown: Yeah, it's quite challenging because you know the accenting of that verse does. 17:31 Andrew Brown: There's language evidence going two different ways. The construction is not quite like anything else that's out there. We would normally expect in a subordinate construction with a phrase in like bereshit in the beginning we would expect that to be followed by an infinitive, you know. 17:50 Andrew Brown: In the beginning of something to happen, you know, in the beginning of this action or that action defined very non finitely. 17:59 Andrew Brown: So it's unusual to have what looks like sort of an adverbial phrase, but a sheet followed by this definite verb. So the Masoretic accent system actually puts a disjunctive under berate sheet as if it stands alone, and that tends to support this absolute rendition. 18:20 Sean Finnegan: OK, so in the beginning God created that. 18:23 Andrew Brown: Yes, correct. Yeah. 18:25 Andrew Brown: There is the the nearest language example to this is early in the book of Hosea. I believe it is. I think it's Hosea 1-2 where it talks about the beginning of Hosea's prophetic ministry and it doesn't use para sheet but it uses tequila. Another word for beginning. 18:45 Andrew Brown: And the construction is quite similar. I'd need to read it carefully to. I won't try and take it from memory, but that's the best analogy. 18:54 Sean Finnegan: Pilot Dibar Adonai, or Yahweh. 18:55 Yeah. 18:58 Andrew Brown: Right. So you'll notice that it uses a finite verb like Genesis 11, you know debar. 19:04 Sean Finnegan: Interesting. So. So you you think the grammatical evidence is more on the absolute side? That is pretty typical among Christian translations. 19:12 Andrew Brown: Yes, I I do think it's a stand alone statement and that goes with the sort of a discourse understanding that. 19:20 Andrew Brown: I think here we have a an initial summative statement prior to the narrative on role, so I understand that that one verse summarizes all the action that's about to follow in the remainder of chapter one. So that's kind of a discourse comment. 19:26 OK. Yeah. 19:37 Sean Finnegan: Yeah. Talk to us about this millennial approach, like the cosmic week. What's that all about? And yeah. 19:46 Andrew Brown: Yeah, yeah, this is fascinating. This ties into the way that early Christian Bible interpreters really tended to think typologically about everything. 19:56 Andrew Brown: That they expected to see correspondences between different things. 20:00 Andrew Brown: In keeping with the fact that readers of Revelation, which was a little bit of a contentious book early on, you know, in canonical terms the fact that they were seeing, you know, AA1000 year, millennial Kingdom there in Revelation 20 and then statements like a a day for the Lord is like 1000 years, you know which. 20:23 Andrew Brown: Is quoted in to Peter three from the Psalms. Yeah, that that led some Christian interpreters, particularly the more kind of material Millennium people. 20:34 Andrew Brown: To expect or to understand that each day of the Creation Week was an enigmatic hint at a sort of an unfolding program for the ages. Now something we have to clarify that's become clear in the last 50 or 60 years is that it was a long, long time. 20:54 Andrew Brown: Before it was seen to describe 6 separate millennia of human history and then and then a millennial Kingdom for a long time, the 6000 years were viewed as a lump in particular. 21:07 Andrew Brown: Now the problem, in a way here was that if you are operating on a Sep 2 agent time scale and you had a creation around about 5500 BC, given the numbers in the genealogies in the Step 2, again nearly Genesis. 21:24 Andrew Brown: Then you had Jesus arriving seemingly quite suitably in the middle of day 6. 21:31 Andrew Brown: Of you know, at the five and a half thousand year Mark. So that seems suitable, but as patristic history unfolded, you began to face the prospect that you were getting towards the end of day six and you might expect something eschatological to happen. Yes. And now this means that the more allegorical interpreters. 21:34 Yeah. 21:51 Andrew Brown: Such as usability. 21:53 Andrew Brown: One of the motives in establishing their chronology or Eusebius establishing his chronology was that he actually establishes a shorter pre Christ time scale that runs back to 5200 BC in his chronology, which actually takes all the eschatological heat. 22:14 Andrew Brown: Out of expectation in his time and projects, a return of Christ, if it were to come at the end of 6000 years, quite a few centuries into the future. 22:24 Andrew Brown: So this has been pointed out by a guy called Michael Landers. These patristic efforts to damp down kind of apocalyptic enthusiasm, you know, cool off expectations that people can expect Jesus in a generation or two. So obviously that was a bit of a a live issue for the early church. The way it sometimes has been for the modern evangelical churches. 22:43 Yeah. Yeah. Well. 22:44 Sean Finnegan: I mean, you've I'm sure you see it from time to time. I certainly do. Where some author will write a book. 22:53 Sean Finnegan: And predict the end or some YouTuber or whatever. And being a pastor and and dealing with real people, I tell you it is amazing to me how frequently they will say ohh so and so just predicted the end of the world and I'm like haven't I preached on this like enough times that like everyone who's ever predicted this has been wrong. 23:15 Sean Finnegan: So far, don't listen to this knucklehead. He's just trying to sell books, or he's sincerely deceived. Either way, it's not good. 23:22 Sean Finnegan: For you. 23:23 Sean Finnegan: And you know these waves. They just come one after another after another. And I I do feel your frustration. 23:31 With this whole. 23:31 Sean Finnegan: Debate, but at the same time, it's also heartening to know that people are looking forward to the coming of Christ, that this is still something that's very much alive and and and Christians hearts around the world. So yeah, I definitely hear what you're saying there. I'm thinking of the Epistle of Barnabas. Was it that had the. 23:51 Sean Finnegan: Was that the earliest one with the six days and it would come on the 7th day? 23:51 Yes. 23:55 Sean Finnegan: Yeah, it's an interesting theory, but it's not biblical, so I don't think we're beheld into it. At least those of us who are, you know, of the Protestant mindset. Yeah. 23:58 That's fine. 24:05 Andrew Brown: So it it kind of had two lives, right? It had a life off the back of the dominant set two again, chronology that the early church was operating with, where creation was 5 1/2 thousand BC Ish. 24:16 Andrew Brown: And so it had a a kind of a hot period leading up to about 500. And then Jerome was actually responsible largely for the fact that young Earth creationism today is operating from more like a 4000 BC chronology as he he turned attention back to the Hebrew, you know, away from the septum again as the basis of the Latin. 24:37 Andrew Brown: OK, that really. 24:38 Andrew Brown: Meant that you know, as you approach the end of the second Millennium, you know the year 2000, you were back in another hot zone of Co expectation. But at the time he, you know, he probably thought he was solving a problem. 24:47 Sean Finnegan: Thanks. Thanks a lot, Jerome. 24:55 Sean Finnegan: Ohh man that's funny. 24:56 Sean Finnegan: What? What about? 24:57 Sean Finnegan: The Alexandrian school, could you comment on their approach? 25:00 Andrew Brown: Yeah, of all the groups that are not really interested in the unfolding of physical history of creation, that's very much the case there and yeah. 25:09 Andrew Brown: So Oregon is such a big mind that we all need to get to know him. You know, he proved controversial in the long run and I think was operating on such a high plane that a lot of ordinary believers probably found him hard to follow, I would imagine. But he famously said, you know, about the days of creation along the lines of. 25:23 Sean Finnegan: Yes. 25:29 Andrew Brown: You know who that has a brain in their head is gonna think that these are literal days and that there was actually, like, you know, three lit days before the sun was created. He kind of couldn't believe that anyone would really take it that. 25:43 Andrew Brown: Way, yeah. 25:44 Yes. 25:45 Andrew Brown: And more basically the Alexandrians and then this influenced Augustine and others. 25:51 Andrew Brown: We're thinking it's pretty dishonouring to the glory of God to think that God actually needs seven days to create the problem for the modern thinker is that seven days isn't kind of long enough for to produce the appearance of history that we see built into the rocks and so forth. But for them it was really a theological objection. 26:12 Andrew Brown: To seven days being not too short, but too long. Right. You know why? Why would the all powerful. 26:18 Andrew Brown: God need time to do things and and yeah. 26:21 Sean Finnegan: It just pop it into existence, yeah. 26:23 Andrew Brown: Right. Yeah. So look, the flow of time just was not a big factor in their thinking at the. 26:31 Sean Finnegan: Time. All right, let's move to Augustine. I'd like to say that he's the most influential. 26:36 Sean Finnegan: Christian, after Paul in the first thousand. 26:39 Sean Finnegan: Years. I don't know if you would. 26:40 Sean Finnegan: Agree with that. But he's. 26:42 Sean Finnegan: Just his influence is just ridiculously powerful. On his own, his own time. But you know, enduring, because I I really think of. 26:42 Andrew Brown: Yeah, pretty much. 26:50 Sean Finnegan: Luther, as I turn back to Augustine and Calvin as well. So like his feel like his shadow is still casting even in our own time. But yeah, what what was his take on it? Maybe you could just offer some remarks there. 27:06 Andrew Brown: Yes, I I think this is the creation stance that we most need to know about from the patristic. 27:15 Yeah. 27:16 Andrew Brown: And I agree with you about the significance of Augustine. Here's the great synthesis of the church resolves a well thought out systematic position on so many doctrines. You know, like the Trinity, a theology of history in the City of God. And sure enough creation as well. He starts out offering. 27:35 Andrew Brown: Allegorical interpretations of the Creation week to refute Manicheans, so he comes out of a Manichean background, knows a mannequin, adherent for 9 year. 27:46 Andrew Brown: Also, and one of their takes on the Bible is to mock the literal meaning of what they read in narratives like creation. And so his first tactic is to interpret the details there allegorically as a sort of a small target tactic, but he he's not actually satisfied with that because he returns to the creation account more than once. 28:07 Andrew Brown: As if drawn to a more concrete interpretation, that doesn't simply allegorize the details. 28:14 Andrew Brown: Where he lands is in one of his great works. The literal meaning of Genesis completed over quite a period of time. 28:22 Andrew Brown: He concludes that he does need to handle this text literally, but a literal handling of the days of creation proves to be that this symbolizes for us stages in the cognition of creatures higher than us angelic creature. 28:40 Andrew Brown: Recognising the plan of God in its ideal form and then in its unfolding so his literal days of creation, literal phases in an instantaneous creation. And so he's really significantly influenced by this Alexandrian position. 28:58 Sean Finnegan: And Neo Platonism, right? 28:59 Where it's. 29:00 Andrew Brown: Yes, correct. Yeah. And he he really can't conceive of why you would need chronological days, but they must mean something. 29:10 Andrew Brown: And so he understands. The evening morning cycle to be different levels of awareness of creation. You know, there's a sort of a darker awareness where you understand something in its physical phenomena like a scientist would. But for the Neoplatonist Augustine, a higher kind of knowledge is to grasp the reality of something. 29:30 Andrew Brown: In its ideal substrate, you know the the plan behind the physical manifestation. 29:34 Sean Finnegan: Essence of the form. 29:37 Andrew Brown: To grasp that is a higher thing, and then the third stage is to turn that awareness to worship of God. And that's really a theme across several of our creation interpreters in the. 29:51 Andrew Brown: Course of church history is really that to grasp creation and right is just a a little like the mere edges of his ways. In job 37. It's it's a way to actually grasp something about the nature of God himself and that enhanced. 30:08 Andrew Brown: Perception really should result in worship. 30:12 Andrew Brown: So that that might be something of value we can take. 30:14 Andrew Brown: From you know, yeah. 30:16 Andrew Brown: You can say that about Basil. You can say it about Augustine. You can say it about Calvin, that even the humblest awareness of the realities of the world can be an inspiration for our worship. 30:28 Sean Finnegan: Yeah, I'm reminded of Psalm 19. day-to-day pours for speech and. 30:32 Sean Finnegan: The creation is declaring the glory of God, you know, and I think there's a similar move in Romans 1. 30:38 Sean Finnegan: About creations testifying about God's invisible attributes seems like a very, very important aspect of the whole reading of the creation account that that we basically just miss today is like using it in the sense of devotionally or as part of worship. Perhaps the the closest. 30:59 Sean Finnegan: I could think of off the top of my head is a Australian song from Hillsong the The So will I song. Do you know that one? Yeah, that that was a really interesting meditation on creation. Yeah. I thought that was very. 31:09 Andrew Brown: Yeah. 31:16 Sean Finnegan: Well done. 31:17 Sean Finnegan: Enjoyed that? Yeah, go ahead. 31:18 Andrew Brown: So I think that's one of the things I think about the way creation often manifests in the mind of the the believer who's you know, feeling threatened by evolution or what have you is that there's a need to sort of mend the barricades. And basically there's a a defensive kind of thinking and then lots of ways I kind of understand it. There are plenty of scientists out there who. 31:40 Andrew Brown: Don't mind the occasion to, you know, disparage Christian Navy. 31:44 Andrew Brown: What have you? There are reasons why people feel defensive and just an instinctive sense that these different explanations for the world tending to exclude one another. But I actually think this this worship attitude can make the whole topic of creation not something that arouses all of our defensiveness and self protection, as if we're in retreat. 32:06 Andrew Brown: But can actually change our mindset so that we can hop out of our trenches and realise as servants of the God who undergirds and authors creation, we're kind of on the winning side that way, right? We don't have to try and hold on to our last trench. We've been introduced to the God that is the source of all the beauty and order in. 32:27 Andrew Brown: The world. 32:28 Andrew Brown: And I I just think that should create a fundamentally optimistic attitude in us that there's not no point digging trenches if you intend to keep moving. 32:38 Andrew Brown: Forward. 32:39 Sean Finnegan: Yeah, I wonder what your opinion is of like John Walton's approach to Genesis. Is that something you broadly agree with or you think is misguided or what? What's your take on it? 32:50 Andrew Brown: Yeah. So I think that it's good to incorporate this idea of function into our understanding of what a creation narrative is going to try and explain in the Bible. 33:04 Andrew Brown: One thing I would say is that ancient Near East creation stories in general are often trying to explain not just how the physical planet and its vegetation and animal life came into being, but really how does the world that we know today come into being. And it tends to incorporate. 33:22 Andrew Brown: Human society and technology and things like that, that they form part of a creation story. Now, there's already a bit of distinction happening in early Genesis because the rise of technology. 33:33 Andrew Brown: Is taken outside of divine origins and made the responsibility of human beings in Genesis 4IN going on. So there's actually a pretty modern kind of distinction between the rise of civilization and the rise of technology. In contrast to ancient, there is stories, but I think we're being presented with a world that's made. 33:54 Andrew Brown: Functional for living in, that's that's. 33:56 Andrew Brown: Made life friendly and so that has a functional aspect. I think John Walton's right in that regard. 34:04 Andrew Brown: Where I think he's taking a bit of a small target approach is to say that the creation weak narrative, you know, the hexamine is really purely about function and is not saying anything about sort of. 34:17 Andrew Brown: The structure of our world. 34:19 Andrew Brown: But there is a physicality to it. 34:20 Andrew Brown: When you read. 34:21 Andrew Brown: It it's laid out in very broad categories, so you know as broad as you could just about get them. 34:27 Andrew Brown: You. 34:27 Andrew Brown: Know here's things that are in the sea in two or three categories. There's things on land in three or four categories very, very broad. You, you could say, very versatile on that account, but it's not. 34:39 Andrew Brown: A physical right, it's it's sort of not purely about functionality and nothing to do with physicality. So I think when I try and read like an Israel like would have read. 34:49 And. 34:50 Andrew Brown: Can't eliminate. 34:53 Andrew Brown: Physical origins, as if it's not a concern. 34:55 Sean Finnegan: Yeah. So perhaps he offers an overcorrection, taking the pendulum all the way over to function when there's maybe something of both to be appreciated there. So. 35:08 Andrew Brown: This. 35:08 Andrew Brown: 1. 35:10 Sean Finnegan: I wonder if you could synthesize for us. I mean we we obviously can't get to the rest of the book. People will have to get it if they want to know about the Middle Ages, about the Reformation, about more modern. 35:23 Sean Finnegan: Sometimes, but I I wonder if you could synthesize for us how you look at it in a brief way. You know, I I won't interrogate you, but you are rather coy in the book. So we'll see how you are in the. 35:40 Sean Finnegan: Flesh. 35:41 Andrew Brown: Yes. Yeah, I do come across as rather coy. I'm sort. 35:45 Of. 35:45 Andrew Brown: A fair degree of a non concordance in my approach to early Genesis in that I don't think it's saying a lot to us about physical process. 35:54 Andrew Brown: Given that, I think that the creation week itself is a literary device, and you know, my earlier studies showed that it was a familiar storytelling device from. 36:06 Andrew Brown: The bail cycle in Ugaritic literature and and other ancient news stories, you know, so when these stories talk about the flood, they don't talk about a 40 day flood. They talk about a seven day flood. 36:19 Andrew Brown: And the ship in the story lodges on the hill, you know, on the climactic 7th day of a of a six and then a seven day series. So this device of something going for six days and then reaching its climax on the 7th day is a familiar trope in ancient near East literature, particularly in the languages. 36:39 Andrew Brown: Plus the Hebrew. 36:40 Andrew Brown: And so I too think that theologically actual literal days would be rather redundant, but I like see John Collins interpretation of the Creation week as an anthropomorphism, much as we see different kinds of anthropomorphisms in the second creation episode. 36:59 With. 37:00 Andrew Brown: You know, God moulding humans like a like a clay pot, right? If that's not an anthropomorphism, I don't really know what it is. The the rest have got on the 7th day, you know, you get to Exodus. 37:11 Andrew Brown: 31. 37:12 Andrew Brown: And it doesn't just say that he ceased, which is how you could interpret. 37:16 Andrew Brown: About in Genesis 2. 37:18 Andrew Brown: He won the three, but it actually says he he rested at the end of creation and was refreshed, got his breath back. Right. So there are lots of anthropomorphisms around the ways of God in creation because human beings especially, you know, back from this first intended audience on needed. 37:38 Andrew Brown: The work of God represented in human terms like a human building project. If they were to understand what was going on so someone like Calvin has a very clear. 37:46 Andrew Brown: Here. 37:47 Andrew Brown: Teaching about how God accommodates his communication, Augustine to how God accommodates his communication to the needs of human beings at the. 37:55 Andrew Brown: Time. 37:56 Andrew Brown: And so I think that speech of the creation week and the kind of timing we get out of that is accommodated speech to allow people to understand in some way God's work of creation. 38:07 Andrew Brown: But if we actually want to find out the history of physical creation and how it unfolds. 38:12 Andrew Brown: I think we're going to need to go to the natural evidence of the rocks and the genetics and see what actually took place. OK, I I think one thing that's often an A crux for Christians is that a bit like our Alexandrians their imagine anything that God in his great power does. 38:32 Andrew Brown: Must be done instantaneously or very close to instantaneously. Everything you would. 38:35 Sean Finnegan: Or directly without your mediary process. 38:38 Expect all the. 38:38 Andrew Brown: Words of God to be a miracle. 38:40 Andrew Brown: Right. But in fact, if we believe and I think this is a critical doctrine. 38:46 Andrew Brown: That not just as a human species, but that you and me and our people that we talked to, pastorally and so forth, every every St. sitting in the Pew is the creation of God. 38:59 Andrew Brown: If that's what we believe, and I think we can establish that from job and Psalms and other places. 39:03 Andrew Brown: Then what we're saying is, God does sometimes do his creative work gradually and by means of natural processes. 39:13 Andrew Brown: The consequence of denying that is to deny that you and me are creations of God, and then that has all kinds of negative ramifications for our self-image and and how we view ourselves in God's world. So I think we need to say that we are creations and that establishes that God does some of his good work gradually and using means. 39:32 Andrew Brown: And not always directly and instantly. 39:36 Sean Finnegan: Very good. Would, would you agree that it's key to read any ancient literature, but especially you know we're talking about Genesis in light of the first people who. 39:48 Sean Finnegan: Would have been the audience. And you know that if you take that step. 39:54 Sean Finnegan: Then the sorts of questions you ask are different of the text, and that's kind of like the key to unlock the hermeneutical, you know, understanding. 40:02 Andrew Brown: Yes, that's right. So I do really like for its efficiency. That's saying that John Walton will sometimes express not to us, but for us. 40:13 Yeah. 40:13 Andrew Brown: And just remembering I I really, really have to read this text as something that was addressed. 40:18 Andrew Brown: To a group. 40:20 Andrew Brown: Of people. Yeah, who existed much earlier than me and and are very different cultural environment. And I'll never perfectly understand what that difference means. But I've got to start to try or else I'm really operating out of the kind of arrogant. 40:31 Sean Finnegan: Yeah. 40:34 Andrew Brown: Paradigm that the most important audience God could have had in mind when he created this. 40:39 Andrew Brown: Picture was me and people like me. 40:41 Sean Finnegan: 21st century Australians, of course. 40:46 Andrew Brown: It's called argon. 40:47 Class. 40:48 Sean Finnegan: Yeah, yeah. To a large degree, the success of the Bible. Oh, I don't know. To a large degree, but to to some degree, the success of the Bible for for many of us, I think is how direct it feels. It does feel like it's speaking directly to us. I mean, think of think of Augustine's total leg. 41:06 Sean Finnegan: Moment in the garden, right? He picked it up and he read from Romans and he was like, this is speaking to me. So there is something about that. But it does land you in hermeneutical. 41:19 Sean Finnegan: Shipwreck because you end up misinterpreting and and not recognizing the the historical context. So it's it's really a both and I think, yeah, I appreciate your. 41:30 Andrew Brown: That's but to us, but not for to not to us, but for us is a nice balance. Right. You know, it still captures that idea that Scripture can continue to live and that basically divine authorship means it can continue to. 41:44 Sean Finnegan: Right there, there is a sense in which the, you know, the spirit is at work even today as we. 41:48 Sean Finnegan: Need great. Do you have? 41:50 Sean Finnegan: Any projects you're working on now, do you? 41:52 Sean Finnegan: Know what's next? 41:52 Andrew Brown: Yes, I I often find myself working on teaching projects which I'd love to do a little more research than I do, so I've just taught my taught early church history for the first time in this past semester, and I'm still. 42:07 Andrew Brown: Still. 42:07 Sean Finnegan: The great class. 42:08 Sean Finnegan: What? What years did you? 42:09 Sean Finnegan: Cover. 42:10 Andrew Brown: Up to the Council of Caledon 451. 42:13 Sean Finnegan: Ohh yeah 451. So yeah, that's that's a good. Yeah, that's fantastic. Did you enjoy it? 42:19 Andrew Brown: Yes, I did. Yes, I still found myself having that interdisciplinary experience of backfilling things I should have read years ago in that area, you know, but I'm interested. 42:31 Sean Finnegan: Taught that class several times and every time I I'm just like amazed at how much I don't know. Every time. It's just like OK, I need to learn more about this or I need to learn more about that. And there are monographs on all of it. You know, like, whatever you want to study, there's so much. 42:48 Yeah. 42:48 Sean Finnegan: Depth. 42:50 Sean Finnegan: That's great. So how can people follow you and and learn more about you? Do you have a website or? 42:55 Sean Finnegan: Anything like that? 42:56 Andrew Brown: Yeah. So I'm on LinkedIn and I have a faculty page as part of MTV's website, which is very simply www.mst.edu dot AU academia, and I have a dormant website called 1st 3/4 dot. 43:15 Andrew Brown: Dot wordpress.com, which just needs some attention really. 43:21 Sean Finnegan: Very good, very good. And your teaching is is really just at the at the school or do you have anything on YouTube as well or any anywhere else? 43:29 Andrew Brown: Yes, so there'd only be the very odd thing on YouTube, but I actually have a lot of my teaching prezzies out there. I don't know. 43:38 Andrew Brown: How? 43:38 Sean Finnegan: Oh yeah, crazy. 43:39 Andrew Brown: Successful. Yeah. Yeah, I I've. I've used Prezi a lot in the past for teaching purposes, so I've just made them available. Yeah. 43:46 Sean Finnegan: Very cool. Alright well. 43:48 Sean Finnegan: Thank you so much for talking with me today. I appreciate your time. 43:52 Andrew Brown: Yeah. Thanks very much, Sean. 44:01 Sean Finnegan: Well, that brings this episode to an end. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org and find episode 556 recruiting Ancients for the creation debate and leave your comments, questions, and feedback there in our episode from last week. Was Paul really subverting Caesar with Clint Burnett? 44:22 Sean Finnegan: A number of people have commented in some on Facebook, some on the website Robert commented in saying I'm having a hard time with. 44:29 Sean Finnegan: This one there seems to be some great disagreement about the nature of the Roman imperial cult. Your guest says there's no such thing. Then goes on for 15 minutes explaining how all these imperial cults operate. Just because there isn't a centralized office sending out official orders doesn't mean it doesn't exist. 44:49 Sean Finnegan: It's like saying there was number Revolutionary Army during the late 1770s because there wasn't an official government yet. 44:57 Sean Finnegan: Well, we I think we might have had our wires crossed a little bit here. What Doctor Burnett is doing is saying there, first of all is no centralized. 45:07 Sean Finnegan: Official Orthodoxy, I guess, for how cities and provinces and individuals should give divine honors to the emperors and their families that came through clearly. And Robert, you say this yourself in the comment. 45:26 Sean Finnegan: What is his main point? What is his complaint? Well, here's his complaint. His complaint is this. 45:32 Sean Finnegan: Lazy overreach that tends to be the case on this subject, where we'll take an inscription from one place and say this is how all people in the Roman Empire thought about this thing. 45:46 Sean Finnegan: And that's just not good historiography. That's just not a good approach to material remains or archaeology. When you find an inscription, when you find an inscription, it tells you what the inscriber and whoever paid for it, and whoever could read it. We're thinking it doesn't tell you what everybody was thinking, and you can't homogenize. I think we've just gone too far in homogenizing. 46:10 Sean Finnegan: Now there are some homogenized. 46:12 Sean Finnegan: Stable factors of the Roman Empire with respect to this topic, and certainly in Burnett's book, you'll see that he does this too. He will say, well, this is a general understanding we find throughout Greco, Roman cities and especially Roman colonies where they were very dialed into the way things happen in Rome. And I think his nuance. 46:32 Sean Finnegan: Is a necessary corrective, a necessary push back basically holding our feet to the fire, saying look, stop it with the decoder rings just because. 46:43 Sean Finnegan: An inscription says the word gospel and applies it to the birthday of the emperor doesn't mean that every time anybody says the word gospel in an inscription or in literature, they're trying to undermine Caesar. 46:59 Sean Finnegan: Or the same thing with the word Lord, where you you do have this later on, his former book, which I haven't read, talks a lot about how the word Lord is used in the the Levant. So the region of Israel and the surrounding country. 47:13 Sean Finnegan: Trees, of course. In those days it would be called Judea and Syria, and and so forth. That whole general region, the Semitic region, would use the word Lord of Kings, but not of gods. So that's really an interesting thought as well. But then to universalize that and say, well, they're calling Jesus Lord, what that means that they're saying. 47:34 Sean Finnegan: Caesar is not Lord. Well, they don't say that. So you're reading that in? 47:39 Sean Finnegan: And you know, if you can make the case that inscriptions or other literature regularly refers to Caesar as Lord, then yeah, you can. You can start to build a case for that, but that's not really what we find in the historical record. So I think that's really what's going on here with Burnett's approach. 47:59 Sean Finnegan: Honestly, I think you should read the book if you're interested in the. 48:02 Sean Finnegan: Topic Brandon also wrote in saying, hey, Sean, can you clarify the consequences of altering what we think about Paul's focus here? What did the two camps lead us to conclude? So Brandon, probably the biggest issue Burnett debunked was as I just mentioned, reading it to Paul calling Jesus Lord like him, Philippians 211 and 1st Corinthians 86, those are two hop. 48:23 Sean Finnegan: Scriptures Flippy is 211 is the part at the end of the Carmen Christie where Paul says that every tongue is going to confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the. 48:33 Sean Finnegan: Whether it's a very elevated way of saying the word Lord I think would be honestly the most elevated way of saying the word Lord. And then in first Corinthians 86 it talks about how there's one for Christians, there's one God, the father and one Lord Jesus Christ, whereas in Corinth there are many gods and many Lords. These are exegetically. 48:54 Sean Finnegan: Significant passages and you can easily start thinking Oh well, yeah, he's he's saying that Jesus. 49:01 Sean Finnegan: Is the true ruler of the. 49:02 Sean Finnegan: World and not Caesar. But that's just reading it in. I think that's Burnett's whole point. That's not really what Paul is up to. Paul wasn't actively seeking how to subvert the Roman empires ideology of applying divine honors to Caesars in a subversive political way by applying those same so-called technical terms. 49:22 Sean Finnegan: To Christ. 49:23 Sean Finnegan: No need for a secret decoder as I've been saying, Paul is doing what he appears to be doing. He's communicating theology and ethics to the churches as needed. He's not really worried about Caesar or concerned about divine honours given to him. Pagans worship their idols, whether old gods or deceased Caesars. It's wrong. Paul knows it's wrong. 49:43 Sean Finnegan: His churches know it's wrong. 49:46 Sean Finnegan: Except for maybe in Corinth there were some that were attending. Going to some meals in sacred spaces, in Pagan temples, which seems to be confronting 1st Corinthians 10. But like and even in that instance there's no separation of like worshipping the ancient gods and worshipping the Caesars. I just don't think it is a. 50:06 Sean Finnegan: A worthwhile focus for polling studies now if we want to talk about revelation, the last book of the Bible. 50:14 Sean Finnegan: I think you can make a point that there is a lot of political subversion there and that that would be an interesting conversation for another day. And I think Dustin Smith has done a lot of work on the sort of political overtones in the Book of Revelation and so has pressure sprinkle in his recent book, Exiles. 50:33 Sean Finnegan: And and others as well. Certainly the commentaries on the book revelation will do. 50:37 Sean Finnegan: That so that would be something interesting to think about, but basically our goal here at Restitutio is to restore authentic Christianity. And if we're under the impression that there are these specialized words and phrases that are doing something over against Caesar and they're not, then just understand that corrective, I think is valuable. 50:58 Sean Finnegan: Well, that's going to be it for today. Thanks everybody for writing in. 51:02 Sean Finnegan: If you'd like to support this ministry, you can do that at restitutio.org. Thanks to all of you who are. We'll catch you next week and remember the truth. 51:11 Sean Finnegan: Has nothing to fear.