Evangelical Gnosticism vs. History
If downgrading the material world is one part of the gnostic tendency in evangelicalism, a tendency to eternalize time is the other. The Bible is filled with chronological information, and it clearly presents an unbroken chronology from the creation of the world to the Babylonian exile. Nobody in the Church ever questioned this until the late nineteenth century. It has become commonplace now, however, to hear that the Bible is not really concerned with chronology, that there are “gaps” in the biblical chronology as it stands, and so forth. Indeed, the nineteenth century became an age of gap theories as far as evangelicals were concerned: Gaps were inserted between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, into the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11, into the chronologies of the kinds of Israel and Judah, and into the seventy weeks of years in Daniel 9. Such a cavalier approach to a text that abounds in detailed chronological information is only possible when men have already begun to think that chronology and history are not all that terribly important. — James B. Jordan, Creation in Six Days, p. 76.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“As is common in ancient genealogies, it is apparent that this genealogy contains gaps. It if were precisely sequential, the events of chs (Gen) 9-11 would cover less than three centuries, all of Abraham’s ancestors would have been still living when he was born, and Shem would outlive Abraham by fourteen years. The purpose of this genealogy is to record the advances of the messianic line. (From the Gen. 11:10-26 note to the “Reformation Study Bible”). This seems reasonable to me. I don’t detect a “cavalier” attitude or sense a belief that history is unimportant. Does Jordan interact with this?
September 10th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Jordan doesn’t interact directly with the Reformation Study Bible itself. His treatment of this subject in Creation in Six Days is brief, but he goes into it at length in his Studies in Biblical Chronology, # 1: The Theology of Biblical Chronology and especially # 2, From Creation to Solomon.
The latter opens with an essay interacting with the arguments of Francis Schaeffer, B. B. Warfield, and William Green on the subject of the chronologies in Genesis 5 and 11, on which, I suspect, the author of that note in the Reformation Study Bible is drawing.
Some of my own interaction (drawing, I admit, on Jordan) with the quotation you posted:
1. As is common in ancient genealogies, it is apparent that this genealogy contains gaps.
Notice that the RSB approaches this question from the standpoint of “ancient genealogies,” not directly from the standpoint of Scripture itself.
But so what if “ancient genealogies” do contain gaps? How does that make it “apparent” that this genealogy contains gaps? So far, the quotation provides no proof of gaps.
2. It if were precisely sequential, the events of chs (Gen) 9-11 would cover less than three centuries, all of Abraham’s ancestors would have been still living when he was born, and Shem would outlive Abraham by fourteen years.
So? Apparently we’re supposed to take this statement as some sort of reductio ad absurdum: because we think it’s absurd that Abraham’s ancestors would still have been living when he was born, we must conclude that there are gaps in the genealogy.
But why should we think that it is absurd for Abraham’s ancestors to have been living when Abraham was born? What is strange about that?
(3) The purpose of this genealogy is to record the advances of the messianic line.
It sounds as if (following Warfield and Green?) the RSB is suggesting that this passage can have only one purpose, and if that purpose is “to record the advances of the messianic line,” it cannot also intend to give us an accurate chronology of this period.
But there’s no reason to believe that a passage of Scripture has only one purpose.
So the RSB doesn’t provide one compelling argument for not taking Genesis 11 (or, for that matter, Genesis 5) as an accurate chronology.
But we can press further:
(4) The RSB note keeps talking about the “genealogy.”
But a genealogy and a chronology are two different things. They happen to go together here, but they are distinct.
Even if there are gaps in the genealogy here, even if “X begot Y” can be applied broadly enough so that X could really be the grandfather or great-grandfather of Y, so what? Genesis 5 and 11 still tell us how old X was when Y was born and how many years X lived after Y was born. Whether Y was X’s son or grandson or great-grandson doesn’t matter for the chronology.
Jordan’s charge of gnosticism, it seems to me, still sticks. The gnosticism here comes in this form: “The purpose of these passages is not to give us accurate dates, a reliable chronology. It is only to give us something else (e.g., a history of the advances of the messianic line).”
The gnosticism is the belief that we can discount the chronology and still cling to the message of the text, as if the chronology isn’t part of that message.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Incidentally, it is a bit unfitting that this note was found in the Reformation Study Bible, which purports to be \”bringing the light of the Reformation to Scripture\” (an unfortunate slogan that, as if poor dark Scripture was just waiting for the Reformation light to shine).
I say it is unfitting because the Reformers wouldn\’t have agreed at all with such a statement.
Martin Luther wrote:
Luther is wrong about the dates, but the quotation shows that he doesn\’t believe there are gaps in the chronology.Â
Calvin writes: \”The world … has not yet attained six thousand years\” (Institutes I.14.1). Elsewhere he talks of those who mock the Bible\’s teaching on predestination, the Trinity, and biblical chronology: \”They will not refrain from guffaws when they are informed that but little more than five thousand years have passed since the creation of the universe\” (III.21.4). And, in his commentary on Daniel, Calvin recommends Oecolampadius\’s work on biblical chronology.
Archbishop Ussher famously developed a chronology of the world, which is sometimes ridiculed, but he wasn\’t alone in holding to the accuracy of the biblical chronologies. We find similar views in John Owen, Matthew Henry, and, more recently, C. F. Keil and Geerhardus Vos.
So in this instance, perhaps someone should shine the light of the Reformation (to say nothing of Scripture itself) on the Reformation Study Bible because what it presents in that note is not \”the light of the Reformation\” at all.