Westminster Standards On Creation-My Comments on Select Questions & Answers
The following writing may have some new ideas for some. I read the WCF and have no problem with it. I understand the difficulties that our primitivist brethren have with the General and Special theories of relativity, much less the Everett Interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is not possible for primitivist people of faith to learn enough physics theory within their lifetimes to have any kind of competence about what time is and how it works, so I won't hope for that kind of improvement. They are saved though, and that is what counts. Even so I will take the opportunity here at the start of the shorter catechism to reply in a little more detail.
I must say that I haven't absolute, definite answer-opinions about all the matters that I will right about following. They are my best surmises, and frankly I do not have enough time or electricity to go into as much detail as I might prefer.
The questions and answers pertaining to creation in the shorter catechism are of special interest for me, as so many have difficulties with the historical dichotomy between Christian faith and evolution theory. It is a schism in the history of ideas that was inevitable probably because of the way that ideas developed over the course of human history.
The moral instruction of God and of the Lord obviously were far advanced over the generally pagan misery of mankind. It was perhaps easier for mankind therefore to interpret more or less accurately moral instructions from the Bible than it was for them to find advanced scientific paradigms or ideas in the Bible far in advance of their society. The ideas of genesis are not intended to provide scientific instruction to humanity. On the other hand scientific ideas are not actually in direct logical conflict with the innate information provided in the Bible. What they are in conflict with is common ideas about the scientific parameters of Genesis that are extra-Biblical yet that have been in use for almost 2000 years. It is somewhat of an ironic providence that within the parameters of the Westminster Standards and the shorter catechism I can be in complete agreement with each of the points provided yet also find different causal relations between Adam, Eve and mankind regarding creation.
I believe that I will in fact show with the relevant points that the Westminster shorter catechism can support evolution theory and faith simultaneously without making a single change in the composition of the standards-and that is remarkable, to me at least. Evolution theory need not be inconsistent with complete Christian faith and full assurance and confirmation of fundamental Christian Biblical literalism-it is just a convention by evolutionary fundamentalists and Christian primitivists to believe it must be so.
Questions 1-8
The first eight questions and answers of the Shorter Catechism fundamentally need no more than an amen. Question-answer 7 is about predestination though, and I should remark that contemporary physical theory has a lot to say about quantum determinism.
Since Heisenberg formulated the quantum uncertainty principle people have gone on to say rather ex-scientifically that everything is uncertain and that the random probabilities of quantum locations somehow are reflected in the chancy nature of evolution where natural selection is a fluke in regard to the external prevailing physical environment. That all is a rather conflated confusion theory approach bringing together many field theories without any sort of scientific rigor or logic.
So as a Christian philosopher I enjoy considering the actual physical nature of determinism prevailing in the Universe and how that ties into to determinism by Spirit of nature and its course. The way that chance and uncertainty seem to support the idea of free will in an environment wherein certainty is not possible were favorite concepts of the educational left who could dispense of Newtonian mechanics and that sort of mechanistic determinism as well as Christianity in one fell swoop. Those were rash presumption that continue to this day in what has been called an age of fracture.
Christian theologians have supported the concept of physical determinism and predestination for some time. I will not explicate the entire history of the subject here as it would merit a book for itself. Instead I will mention some of the main points of determinism that apply today from more advanced contemporary physics that surpass Newton and the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
A preponderance of quantum physicists today adhere to the Everett Interpretation-named for the late Hugh Everett who with a PhD and radical theories could never get a real job in physics, became depressed and died early. He may have found work as a used car salesman or something like that.
A physicist named Erwin Schrödinger invented a wavefunction theorem to account for the collapse of quantum particle-waves from a particular location or speed when measured by an observer. Observation of quantum particles was said to make the particles collapse from superposition of all possible locations in the Universe to just one. Recent advances in physics have made that interpretation less theoretically tenable.
Hugh Everett thought that the wavefunction does not collapse and instead continues, I believe, in different universes. Perhaps I have not got that right. I will try again. All hypothetical particle-wave superpositions that comprise waves in all possible Universes really exist in a complete form, and the observer just observers a different point of one of those when what appears to be a collapse of a particle wave occurs. There are an infinite number of dimensions and thus several Universes may exist in the same space as this Universe though in different dimensions.
In the Everett Interpretation all possible universes in a multi-verse exist with the most fine detail of as little as one particle differentiating them. Observer's consciousness-may be like a spirit, moving to different places in what is a static, complete multi-verse already determined as it is in final form. Space and time are just different 'addresses' in a given Universe. In a sense there is no space-time nor evolution, it all is complete yet as an observer moves he seems to be traveling through space and time. I don't think anyone has applied Everett's principles to Einstein's General Theory of relativity yet so far as to consider that curvature of space is determined in an Everettian way though not in a Newtonian way (where space curved not at all), and where the relativity of space-time is determined, yet it would be interesting to read about. I have wondered how quantum computers would work in a multiverse of a Level 4 Everett composition, and if they too would not be determined. Creating real indeterminism in such a Universe in order to make calculations and answers meaningful would be challenging since a wavefunction would not really collapse with an answer. Or if it did, the answer might be unreliable as the logic could be warped adversely by unknown factors of extra-dimensions and reductions from static wavefunction lines that are somewhat arbitrary samples of positions that continue for-themselves and don't actually collapse.
I like all of the macro-cosmic investigations into determinism that from a theological point of view could readily be said to be like the attributes that God has of omnipotence and omniscience. One quickly perceives ideas about God or 'the One' such as Plotinus developed that would be commensurable with contemporary physics and the nature of God. Obviously modern physicists much less evolutionary biologists do not consider the direction they are taking as something that has been considered characteristics of omnipotent God for ages.
The Shorter Catechism question 7 has God predetermining things. God could predetermine what Darwinist political partisans regard as random chance in evolutionary biology. Many Christian theologians would be intellectually challenged too far to consider that either. I find that remarkable. It seems like nothing at all to me, except excellent,that e God can do that sort of thing .
Question 9; "What is the work of creation?
Answer- The work of creation is, God's making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good."
That is the sum total of what is known about creation-although there is more detail in Genesis one than that of course. So I will say how it is important to understand the concept of special and general relativity.
It is also useful to understand what a day is. The word 'day' or 'yom' probably means the very same thing in modern America as it did in the day that Genesis was written down. Babylonians of course invented writing numbers and writing first perhaps-or no later than Egyptians did, and I think that the 24 hour way of counting is of Babylonian origin. Anyway, I don't want to get off track here.
I stipulate that a day is a day in Genesis as it is in New York at New Years. Spacetime relativity theory is known now-since the Jew named Albert Einstein invented it-and it wasn't known back in the day to ordinary people watching their sun dials and sand-hourglass time keepers. That doesn't mean that God didn't know about it or that special and general relativity descriptions if known in 4000 B.C. could not have described spacetime as it really is better than Newton's theory of spacetime. Relativity means that time is relative everywhere-there is no single time across the Universe. The rate of the passage of time changes for people traveling at a significant portion of the speed of light in comparison to those that are stationary.
That is not abstract speculation. The world's GPS satellite require correction because of relativistic effects as they circle around the Earth as precision clocks. Also Arthur Eddington measured the warp of light around the sun's gravitational field early in the 20th century confirming Einstein's general theory about gravity acting as if it warped space (and time).
Many people don't know about mass (matter) and that it is equivalent to energy-entirely convertible in fact in accord with Einstein's famous equation of E=MC2. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. There are four primary physical forces that hold atoms and mass together. The strong force holding quarks together, the nuclear force holding atomic nuclei together, electromagnetism and gravity. Photons have no mass and are purely energetic vibrations in a field-they exist more as phenomena than as substance. The more massive a clump of atomic particles are, the more they are subject to gravity. Gravity draws all mass together unto itself. Einstein's theories provided the reasoning that led to people like the Catholic priest Lemaitre inventing Big Bang Theory...all of the compacted energy at a singularity exploded, inflated faster than light for a fraction of a second becoming vast and then as the energy expanded and cooled it became little clumps of mass that under the strength of gravity drew together to become stars and galaxies.
As stars cycled through their nuclear fuel they exploded creating new elements. Stars burn with nuclear fusions. That ends up generating new chemical elements. Planets form from the detritus of exploding stars. It is believe by many that life evolves. Be that as it may, the physicist Max Tegmark-a multiverse theory specialist, made a dead reckoning mathematical based speculation that no intelligent life exists within the observable Universe besides human. An intense astronomy project looked for any sign within the galaxy and found no obvious radio waves or light signals or other signs of an advanced civilization. If life were easy to form naturally it should be easy to find a trace of it. Tegmark calculated that it is so rare going on known logical extrapolation-inductive estimate premises that there is no intelligent space-faring species out there. That is something of a non sequitur-maybe they will arise next week and invite us all for dinner.
General relativity means that spacetime is one unit. They are in effect a unified spacetime field. If one travels through space time passes more slowly than for someone stationary. Time passes faster for someone that is stationary.
A coefficient relationship exists in anyone's spacetime situation. For example, say that person A has one unit of spacetime, and person B has one unit of spacetime (him or herself). If one travels a 25% speed then they experience only 75% of time, or if they slow to stationary then they use 0% speed and have 100% time. There are complicating factors involving mass.
To travel through a gravitational field at different place of spacetime creates a different experience of the passage of time and shape of space. Space becomes more curved the more mass exists at a given place. I want to say that gravity attracts mass together at larger scales and that the most efficient process in three spatial dimensions and one of time seems to be circular or radial along a particular time-dimension biased direction. If mass were clumped together differently it might be possible to warp space differently too.
I should mention that gravity travels at the speed of light-186,000 miles per second. It is not instantaneous across space or the Universe would be all messed up, and couldn't exist except as a singularity I would think. Spacetime has local values that differ everyplace in the Universe for people traveling through it, or living in different places.
Like riding a bicycle into the wind that increase resistance as one increases speed, as one travels across space toward light speed the resistance of gravity becomes infinite near light speed and mass becomes infinite. That means that person A would be infinitely heavy as they hit light speed, and famously people have pointed out that fueling someone to travel that fast would cost more mass-energy than there is in a galaxy. Like a photon though, person A would experience no passage of time compared to person B who remained stationary on Earth. In fact, person B might be a billion years old by the time person A returned after a day of traveling at light speed (a day to person A) a sixth of the way out to the nearest star to Earth- named Proxima Centauri.
I would like to credit God with being able to travel the speed of light since he made all of the energy and mass. Besides pure spirit probably has no mass. It may be that spirit that is eternal shapes a theoretical Math Universal field of constructions that shape up as energy and that evolve into Higgs Fields, quarks and stars and Universe (s), I don't know for sure. I do believe though that a day for God at the minimum of light speed would let eons pass on earth-enough to populate a Universe's planet of earth if not inform primitives about relativity theory. So I can agree with the Westminster shorter catechism that God created the Universe and world in six days, yet as spirit is without mass God would have characteristics I think of a massless particle at worst, even at rest, and would not really be subject to time or space criteria at all anyway.
Question 10; "How did God create man?
Answer- God created male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures."
This answer is rather vague and leads readily to inaccuracy in the modern world's understanding. In Genesis 1:26 & 27 one has God creating mankind, "after our own image, in our likeness". Nothing is written about "knowledge, righteousness and holiness" . Those are inferences made by the Westminster Presbyterians of the Long Parliament that were probably made in respect of God, yet they are plainly in error by omission and possibly by commission; interpolating a vapor of assumption as doctrine.
The Presbyterian authors of the Westminster shorter catechism might also have misunderstood the order of creation and relationship between mankind and Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are created in chapter two of Genesis-not chapter one whereat were created "mankind" in the image of God. Knowledge of God differs from knowledge of technology and secular things it seems. The relationship of knowledge of God is more primal and perhaps something that even animals can do, while the technical sort in some ways leads to regarding the contingent creation as an end in itself and fabrications of manufacture as more important than the primary relationship. I suppose that Sartre's classification system might call that 'false consciousness'. God does remark to Jeremiah that everyone knows him and perhaps intentionally forget.
Adam and Eve may have been given special attributes by God including limited knowledge, yet eating of the tree of knowledge was their crime, so they must not have had much prior to 'their eyes being opened, and they saw they were naked'. So the Westminster shorter catechism is probably wrong about asserting that Adam and Eve had knowledge like that of God.
Knowledge of God could be a primary source relationship. Paradoxically one might wonder if it represents something of a hierarchical relationship with simplicity being the strongest and best and complexity being the farthest removed though most intriguing for the created beings in a created Universe or multiverse.
Today when I provided a few scraps of bread to my blue jays that had called me early morning with a squawk (a little more raucous than that) and returned inside I saw a jay sitting atop a small tree looking at me through the window as if expecting me to bring more food. It made me think about the fact that blue jays and their cousins magpies are some of the smartest birds-just behind ravens in intellectual power. I thus speculated that given maybe 2 or 3 million years they might increase their brain size to human levels of sentience if they evolved absolutely perfectly.
Perfect, direct evolutionary paths don't happen without directed evolution though. In the case of blue jays, of humanity didn't destroy the environmental health and allowed the birds a few million years to evolve, it is probable that some environmental change would encourage a change that would lead the bird species away from optimizing intellect.
Consider though that the brain size of innumerable species increases on earth over time. The value of a functioning brain is quite high, although some people have also pointed out the disadvantages.
Jays would have innumerable physiological changes that would slowly morph them into something else, although it may be that Earth environmental conditions predetermine evolutionary paths along a few lines from swimming to flying and walking on land regardless of how or where the species first arose. Seals and whales were land mammals before adapting with sea lions to water and developed more fish like fin characteristics over a long time. Birds may have been little reptiles that learned to fly long ago. A photo I took of a sparrow hawk does make its head and neck seem rather snakish.
Oh well. Of the dozens of human primate species that existed humanity may have killed off most of the ones that survived until humanity became like more humans 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Directed evolution of God of the parameters of the entire worldly affair perhaps predetermined when and how human life would appear at the last second of day six in evolutionary terms. That is the logical order that evolution theory found life to be too. In a sense, mankind evolved over millions of years while modern sentience and the age of moral accountability with the difference known between good and evil only arrived 15-20 thousand years ago. In olden times if someone killed someone and one learned about it, the reaction might have been a sense of loss or happiness that the dead was dead yet there would have been little or no moral sense of anything having occurred that was morally wrong I think-it required eating of the tree of knowledge for that development...blue jays don't have it.
The remarkable thing about people today though is that though there may be a directed evolutionary process of determinism in effect as God has created a multi-verse (more about spacetime later), and though there is a gradation of innumerable species with different brain sizes over which humanity has dominion, evolutionists imagine that they are at the top of the ladder and that there is no one above them sometimes. Though the entire contingent creation and the knowledge humanity has about it is contingent and about material things rather than spiritual relationship with God who issues the entire construct, humanity becomes mired down in the quantum entanglement steady state Universe or Multiverse instead of seeking a relationship with the person who is the source and author of all existence.
In order to not seem too unrealistic I will stipulate that it is alright for humanity to learn while in-the-world. It is interesting and beautiful because God created it. They simply should not become lost in the details of existence and lose moral bearing that is the source of so much wickedness. Without the Lord to alleviate the human condition of original sin through saving at least some-and post-millenialists believe generally that at some time in the future that will comprise a majority of the human population, humanity suffers in misery and material snares until death and judgment.
I believe though that the remarks about being made in the likeness of God applies not to Adam and Eve specifically, but to mankind generally. I say this because mankind was created in chapter one and Adam and Eve in chapter two. Because Adam and Eve are mentioned as the first people by name it is traditional to assume that they were created first and everyone else descended from them, yet that is probably a wrong assumption, and one not literally supported by scripture whatsoever. Mankind was made to exist, then Adam and Eve were created, 'tested' and thrown back into the pond.
If mankind was created in chapter one on day six, not Adam and Eve and God rested the seventh, one might want to ask what characteristics in the image of God did mankind have that made them in the likeness of God. My short answer would be sentience, conscious cognition etc. That's all; not knowledge at all equivalent to God, nor righteousness or holiness. Mankind were animals yet thinking animals with the potential to learn more. Mankind was given dominion over animals yet it was only potential. For quite a while animals ruled much of the world and people were killed by wildlife. Viruses still kick down quite a few lives, yet science is getting the upper hand on that a little. The biggest threat is that humanity will kill off so much life that they kill their own foundation for existence in a life-field of living things that supports their existence. Primitive man had a kind of righteous innocence as dumb animals unaware of the difference between good and evil, and were holy only in the sense that maybe God conferred holiness on 'em as a kind of charitable presumption because He made them and they were innocent as animals with the ability to lean with knowledge processing brains. Humans could think however and so could have a sense of the holy; they did worship all sorts of items, whereas animals don't worship anything. Mankind was not the only hominid that evolved. Mankind is the survivor of killing off every rival human-like species that existed on Earth. Neanderthals existed until 35,000 years ago. Europeans have 3% Neanderthals genes from interbreeding or raping and being raped.
Before Adam and Eve though, humanoid genocide was fair dinkum and mankind was 'innocent' of any wrong doing. The leader of ISIS that repeatedly raped a captured American woman medical provider for a few years has no concept of sin I think-it being absent from Muslim theology. Original sin in primitive man existed as potential only. Paul said that before the arrival of the law there is no knowledge of sin.
Animals just eat other animals and except perhaps for elephants and whales, could have no sense of the holy, although I believe it has been mentioned-in-the Bible-that all creation worships God, and so has de facto a sense of the holy while perhaps just humans are capable of being daft atheists etc.
I believe the Westminster shorter catechism makes the mistaken assumption that characteristics of Adam and Eve given a special status in Eden applied to all of humanity. Evidently there is substantial error amongst some Protestants not only about eschatology and the Revelation, but about creation too. Errors understanding the beginning and end seem widespread; oh well.
Mankind were given dominion over creatures whereas Adam named them. Adam exists late in history it seems when language was developed and though he may have been in an intelligent, righteous condition comprising holiness acceptable to God, given the gift of woman he quickly lost his wits and dialectical evolution of sin between the woman, the snake-devil and Adam directly evolved. God punished and corrected the live-for-the-day couple that ate of the tree of knowledge by throwing them out from Eden into the general population of the planet earth that instead of being full of knowledge (morons compared to God), righteousness and holiness, were a cast of animals. After God had evolved mankind to the point that they developed language skills and they had a modern style cerebellum (an illustrative point not in the Bible obviously) he created Adam and Eve were they failed and were cast out.
Eating of the tree of knowledge took Adam and Eve out of the metaphysically different Garden wherein they did not age. They seem to have been in a state of grace spiritually until the fall. With the fall they lost their immortality or eternal bodies appropriate perhaps to heaven and became subject to normal human characteristics of mortality, birth and death. Those are characteristics of all life in a temporal Universe. Life exists by eating other life and adding new energy to itself. There is no morality in that state of animal innocence before they learn the difference between good and evil. When mankind evolved to a point of contemporary intellect they learned the difference between good and evil and were no longer innocent. They could see that murder is wrong eventually-especially when 'thou shalt not kill' informed them of that.
The first human civilization probably existed somewhere between 10-15,000 B.C. and drowned beneath a flood surge somewhere in lower Mesopotamia during the Wisconsin Ice age's end. The sea level has risen 200 feet from the time of the last ice age. Melt-waters from glaciers in the high mountains of modern Turkey might have helped the flooded Tigris and Euphrates drown that first city perhaps located inland a little below or at sea level. Noah and family on the Ark came to rest in the ancient kingdom of Urartu (transliterated by ancient Jews into Ararat).
I realize this is too much for ye ancient interpreters of Genesis yet it is not inconsistent with scripture. What is written in scripture basically has no scientific parameters provided. One can use evolution theory as well as relativity without changing a word of Genesis or the truth of Genesis or of God creating the world and Universe at all. Those that learned ancient dogma and are not creative or well-informed about physical reality just prefer to ignore a modern interpretation of ancient scripture. If my opinion differs on off-line points of scripture with the Westminster standards in a subtle way, yet is still in agreement too, even that is probably too complex to be accepted by primitivist Christians. Sin of course is still sin-nothing modern man can do changes that.
I believe that mankind were created with potential yet were in a state of innocence until God discovered that Adam and Eve in perfect condition willfully disobeyed and sinned. They fell out of harmony with the will of God and were added to the general population with a special relationship remaining with God however. That relationship through the descendants of Adam and Eve-the chosen people that would evolve in time to be Christians- was a beneficial thing for mankind. It provided a way for mankind to be saved and reconciled to God even before mankind was regarded as sinful (remaining in animal innocence).
Mankind was doomed to evolve as intelligent, tree-of-knowledge eating sinners doing good and evil, raucous, unrighteous hell-raisers and without Adam and Eve none of them would ever have been saved.
God did of course drown out all of humanity in the civilization that Noah lived in, yet people existed outside that sons of Noah could marry into and start nations around the middle east.
It seems probable that all of the people in Noah's civilization were destroyed simply because God viewing Noah-the righteous Jew and his family, could not stand the sight of the others in comparison. Perhaps they were no worse though than the people living around the rest of the region and ancient world.
If one has a mistaken assumption that mankind were all full of knowledge, righteous and holy, and that only Adam and Eve sinned and God therefore condemned everyone in the ancient world as sinners-that would be an inversion of God's usual relationship with people where he will spare the wicked many if there are even a substantial minority of god-fearing somewhat righteous people. If the whole world were holy and righteous except for Adam and Eve he would not have been likely to destroy them.
So what is the alternative in the wrong context of Adam and Eve dooming the rest of humanity existing at the time since I have thrown out the criteria of God created Adam and Eve on the sixth day and rested. That's out of the actual order of presentation given in the Bible. People are used to putting 'go to' code for chapter two back to the sixth day of chapter one and I think that's wrong. It seems more likely that one skips ahead to the modern times of 15,000 B.C. or so from the evolutionary mechanics of the first chapter. If Adam and Eve were not created first and then tested, and were instead given dominion over all of the animals and were knowledgeable, righteous and holy, why one might ask, did God recreate them in the Garden and find them willfully disobedient sinners and cast them out so they would toil and reproduce and raise countless generations of contaminated sinners? That scenario doesn't work for me.
Is it that they brought their infected-with-knowledge selves to human society and like contaminating Typhoid Mary-Prometheus' taught everyone how to build a fire, or a sword, or invest in derivatives in a modern context for illustrative purposes? If that was the case then God in choosing to release known, contaminated beings into the general population of holy, righteous, knowledgeable but ignorant mankind (just the potential to learn existed) was somewhat malicious. I think God would do that unless he want mankind to get better at technology quicker, and to develop moral laws and so forth, in order to have a relationship with him. I think this entire approach though isn't correct.
Another point is that of immortality. The world God created, one would think, was a world with temporality and the present physical laws governing the composition of atoms and movement of planets and stars. That means that life was mortal in its thermodynamic existence. God created mankind just after animals, and I think that the animals and mankind were not immortal as if they were made of plastic like pink flamingos with the ability to move around and think. Adam and Eve did not eat of the tree of knowledge, yet previously while in the garden they did not age nor Eve give birth. So I will revise the point about Adam and Eve's immortality; they weren't. Instead they might have lived a thousand years or indefinitely-a period of time long enough for God to learn about them and their ability to follow the rules voluntarily.
To consider the issue again; Adam and Eve were long-lived in the garden probably, although they seemed to sin and have sex as fast as Freddie Mercury might have when the opportunity arose, so they were tossed with a corrections plan in place.
Mankind was not immortal and were not holy once they were associated with Adam and Eve as typical humans made in ideal circumstances. God knew humanity on its own would sin perhaps and put in place a long term plan for salvation.
Adam and Eve were on the honor system and like the first homosexual transgressors at U.S. military academies perverting without permission would be chastised, were thrown out when they broke the rules. Governments today institutionalize sin; sexual and homicidal, and that is just the way it is. Individuals are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Adam and Eve were representative, archetypal human beings created in the second chapter of human existence. The first chapter was about God's evolution of the Universe. The second chapter of history began with mankind coming of age simultaneously with sin and knowledge, and that is sort of where the world's population is today.
A Couple of Questions, Answers and Comments from the Larger Catechism Pertaining to Creation
Before continuing with the Shorter Catechism I will consider a pair of question from the Larger Catechism that pertain to creation issues.
"Q115-What is the fourth commandment?
A-The fourth commandment is, Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 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 on the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it."
Six days for spirit as perhaps much faster than a massless particle travelling at the speed of light is relatively a much longer period of time than six days experienced by a human being with the planet of earth's particular gravitational field criteria. So I agree with this statement completely although I am sure that primitivists of Christian and Atheist kinds would interpret it differently than I.
The Larger Catechism
"Question 116-What is required in the fourth commandment?
Answer-The fourth commandment requireth of all men the sanctifying or keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in the Word. expressly one whole day in seven; which was the seventh from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, and the first day of the week ever since, and so to continue to the end of the world, which is the christian sabbath, and in the New Testament called the Lord's Day."
The answer can use a little comment. I suppose lawyers writing legal contracts might find such language a basis for disputation regarding meaning. yet it is not too complex or ambiguous. In brief it says that because God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh declaring the seventh aa sabbath day of rest, thus it should be kept sacred.
It uses the term 'beginning of the world, rather than beginning of the Universe. In either case I doubt that the word 'world' existed in ye ancient language at all-it has a more roundish connotation to it in a way. It should say since the beginning of first light rather than world if it wants to be consistent with the Bible. Stars obviously exist and have been seen and understood since at least Newton and Copernicus yet really before. First light is not of this world-so that technical difference is another point of divergence of sloppy interpreters of Genesis with the book itself.
I should not really say sloppy though-it's a convenient term though not a fair one. The Westminster Presbyterians were not theoretical astronomers at all and the idea that God created light was just another way of saying that God created lighting for an anthrocentric view of cosmology they had. They probably believed in a flat Earth generally. Today we know that the entire Universe has stars that create light, and that visible light is a result of photons. Though there was energy earlier nearly first light that is still visible today as the cosmic microwave background at appx 3 degrees above absolute zero. In the physicist's Universe 380,000 years after inflation a hydrogen plasma sphere with irregularities existed, and that material that was bright light cooled down to become stars and galaxies and matter over billion of years with stellar fusion and stellar explosion creating a cascade of new elements on the way. So first light not only created 'the world', if filled the Universe with elements and molecules such as water and larger structures such as stars, greater and lesser lights, reflecting moons, planets etc. The star dust even forms the matter that human beings are made of. mankind was literally made from dust (it says something like the latter in the Bible people have said).
Further it specifies that the seventh day sabbath existed from the beginning of the world unto the resurrection of Christ, and thereafter it was kept on the first day of the week, and would be evermore.
The answer is not really supportive of time value literals regarding days. One cannot extrapolate from the answer that Adam was made on the sixth day and kept the sabbath the next. Adam might not have done that until he had been alive six days himself being created I would guess, as an adult ex nihilo.
While God rested on the seventh day I would think that the keeping of the sabbath by humanity might not have started until after the fall, and plainly humanity were not doing a very good job at that in the first little civilization that would be drowned in a flood like a sack of wicked puppies that were man-eaters or something.
However Adam and Eve as first parents of the chosen people evidently had God in their presence in some way after they were kicked out of the garden of eden and of course God intervened to punish Cain.
If Adam and Eve were kicked out of Eden into a pre-existing humanity who also fell with their arrival into a knowledge of the difference between good and evil, the prot-chosen people line may have kept the sabbath while the normative humanity and especially those influenced by cain and Tubal-Cain scoffed at such days off or sacredness running amok as they willed.
If Adam and Eve arrived late in the history of humanity-say 15,000 B.C., then the beginning of the world in a sense would correlate with the beginning of civilization or human consciousness transformed after eating of the tree of knowledge and becoming morally accountable. Keeping the sabbath day is another instance of moral accountability and obedience to the will of God that the fallen could not consistently avoid failing. If Adam and Eve were made late on the sixth day and God rested on the seventh establishing a sabbath to give to Adam and eve rather than mankind in general for them to pass on to their descendants, then it is from that earliest, almost legendary line that a Sabbath was kept on to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That period could be anywhere from 7,000 to 20,000 years in length. There were very poor written records before the invention of cuneiform and hieroglyphs much less the aleph beth, so written history starts no earlier than 6,000 B.C. I think.
I believe that primitivists may take the answer to mean that in six earth days (big E for primitivists) the world was made-without considering the effects of general relativity, and that the sabbath was made for all on the seventh, and that it has been kept ever since the world was made in perhaps 4004 B.C. going on the figuring of Bishop Usher who added up the years of the ante-Diluvian patriarchs to find the right number. I have added up the same patriarchal values and multiplied them by Peters 1000 years for God equals one day for man number and found the creation of life on earth to have started something like 3.5 billion years ago-in agreement more or less with the biologist's estimate of when multicellular life evolved on earth (as differentiated from space-a solid substance made of ground up minerals). I am no longer so keen on that interpretation though after considering various parameters of General Relativity. In ways of viewing the six days value, for God who is faster than light as pure spirit and prior to space-time creation, it could be equal to effectively trillions and trillions or even an infinite period of time.
Return to the Shorter Catechism
"Question 11; what are God's works of providence?
Answer-God's works of providence are his most holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions."
This answer has a respectful and correct attitude toward God. Modal logic points glare at us however. God 'governs all his creatures and their actions', later all we will find that the elect are determined to salvation. One wonders why God made Adam and Eve such that they could sin. I suppose that allowing free will is valuable to God in the sense that he wants free people rather than slaves to exist in a relationship. salvation through the Lord freely accepted at the same level of willfulness that allowed Adam and Eve to sin is good enough to work. Without Jesus people could not meet God's standards.
"Question 12-What special act of providence did God exercise towards man in the estate wherein he was created?
Answer-When God had created man he entered into a covenant with him; upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of knowledge, of good and evil, upon pain of death."
This is an interesting question-answer point. I agree with it if one takes it as referring to Adam and Eve and the chosen people line that runs through to the Lord. Yet if it is taken to referring to all of mankind then it is apparent contradiction of question 10, wherein man was said to have been created with knowledge, righteousness and holiness, rather than being given a covenant-contract and given terms to which he must comply. In question ten mankind has knowledge, and here in twelve we are informed that mankind has been forbidden to eat of the tree of knowledge. That seems implicitly contradictory yet is easily explicable if the distribution of referent terms is changed.
Mankind is also given death as a penalty in for breach of contract in question-answer 12. First parents is the problem for the Westminster catechism though, that causes the contradictions.
It is true that Adam and Eve were given death, yet not physical death, unless it be that of mortality that is common in being human. Adam and Eve were not put to death physically, so one must say that they were spiritually dead-a point supported by Christian apostolic authority. Adam and Eve did however have their life spans changed and physiology altered in some way that allowed Eve to give birth. Their heirs had decreasing life spans as the inherited trans-mortal grace faded away.
I believe Christians used to believe that Adam and Eve were the first human beings and that everyone else was descended from their d.n.a. genome. It is reasonable to suppose that they were the first truly modern humans able to eat of the tree of knowledge maybe 20,000 years ago and that they became the parents of the elect, yet it is not reasonable to suppose that they were the first human beings to exist. Mankind is created or evolved in chapter one and only after God has rested on day seven does he make Adam and Eve.
One readily interprets the penalty of death as meaning Adam and Eve being forced out of the possible immortal condition of Eden into a 'natural' world with temporality and thermodynamics. The end of mortal life is death except for the saved, yet all except the elect are spiritually dead too. Here again I see a logical consistency in this approach that just happens to be reinforced with natural evolution theory while the primitivists prefer magic, illogic and disregard for relativity theory. God is still God in this context of mine, and still he has power to fast forward history if he wants instead of waiting for it all to evolve at some sort of normal speed.
God could make the entire Universe as if it evolved, at a point and in a condition such that it would be after 13.2 billion years of evolution, in an instant I suppose, if He had no patience in eternity to wait for evolution to form his Universe. Some people prefer fast foods over slow cooked gourmet chef presentations. I have even thought about starting a restaurant that is automated to save on employee costs with a 100 varieties of just boil and serve or microwave bags of foods served at perfect temperature. Then one could have fast, slow cooked foods. I think God would have patience though in preparing an Earth for humans to live on, and would evolve it the old-fashioned way maybe giving it a kick here and there if it wobbled off course or bumps into another Universe when it isn't supposed to (although he probably makes perfect designs the first time and doesn't have accidental Universe collisions in multi-verses he has created). Some physics theories lead one to speculate that all the Universe God will create, already exist, and are thus predestined as finished created forms, and that people within them only experience apparent passage through evolving spacetime when it is their one conscious though traveling through different locations in a pre-existing Universe. In that paradigm the only way out of what could be an eternal recurrence in material Universe scenarios created by God would be with a relationship through Jesus Christ who can reconcile human beings to a condition acceptable to pure Spirit. Spirit trumps energy-mass Universe museums that God has made in his omnipotence. I wouldn't suppose that all of those energy and mass Universes have happy endings for the spiritual dead that live in them unless they are saved.
To conclude this comment on question-answer 12; I think Adam and Eve are better understood as test-cases or product sampling of the rest of mankind. On the other hand, if mankind had been evolved and were on the verge of knowledge, God may have tested and flunked the wayward couple in order to provide them with early adulthood corrections to their inventiveness and all the problems caused by making weapons of war and military procuring that they could give a little to mankind so they could have a chance to be saved through other means.
While Adam and Eve sinned and brought condemnation to all of humanity in the sense that Paul described, they also brought the means of salvation to all of humanity that were of the elect. I don't think that God changed all of humanity from an immortal condition, along with possibly immortal animals, into a mortal status after the fall. Instead I believe that mankind created in chapter one were innocent by reason of animal stupidity-consider that courts will not charge someone with murder if their I.Q. is less than 70 I believe it is. Humanity before it had knowledge was more or less circumstantially in something of that sort of a donkey-dumb condition. When Adam and Eve sinned they learned and understood that they had crossed a line and needed to be thrown out of the garden lest they eat of the tree of life.
God said that Adam and Eve had become as little gods after eating of the tree of knowledge. That point is in a minor conflict with the points about mankind being created with knowledge as in the first chapter. At least knowledge is different in the two uses with one being that of perhaps potential to learn and the second of knowing something that makes one a moral evaluator of things. Adam and Eve passed a sanity test knowing the difference between good and evil, or right and wrong, and were convicted for eating forbidden fruit. I don't think the knowledge referred to is carnal knowledge. In their natural condition in Eden evidently they would not have sex or be aware of nakedness. Jesus said that people don't have sex-that is they don't marry nor are given in marriage in heaven, and so that sort of thing is limited to a natural world with thermodynamics. Thus they were cast out of heaven for being aware of nakedness and the potential for sex as a result of their enhanced intellect content of knowledge.
Pure spirit is different from mass-energy and thermodynamic process of evolution of forms. When God created the Universe and world is was made of matter from nothing or from Spirit. Matter has thermodynamics and mankind was made in the world of mass and energy with thermodynamic processes in chapter one. Adam and eve were created in a non-temporal garden in chapter two. I think the Westminster standard Presbyterians just hadn't thought about the issue much, had no idea what thermodynamics are, and had no concept about relativity. They did thus place all of the Bible within a paradigm befitting their endowment of knowledge and arrived with the wrong interpretation that is fortuitously stated in such a pro forma way that I am not in disagreement with it nominally. Way to go Westminster confessors!
"Question 13-Did our first parents continue in the estate in which they were created?
Answer-Our first parents, being left to the freedom of their own will, fell from the estate wherein they were created, by sinning against God."
The short catechism often refers to Adam and Eve as 'our first parents'. It is true that as Christians they are our first parents in the covenant relationships leading to Jesus Christ wherein we became adopted. I think the catechism and standards do err in assuming that Adam and Eve were the first people that God made though-as Genesis One has mankind being made previously. Evolution theory did not register on the minds of 16th century folk-nor that of people before. It was not possible for them to assume that God that God had evolved mankind and other life on earth over eons. They instead had to default to the God instantaneously made things all at once in complete simultaneous phases over six human days before days existed. The ancients thought that time was the same everywhere and that God just had an infinite amount of it perhaps. God did not provide them or the people of the old world with much technical data about cosmology or physics at all...they had to discover that for themselves.
That is logical enough since God did not seem to prefer that Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowledge that let them become inventors and artificers. God gave them a knowledge of his image instead-a knowledge of God, and it was to that they should cling, instead of becoming independent minded, willful beings that want to manufacture things etc. God saw that they had become as little gods and kicked them out of Eden so they did not eat of the tree of life that would have allowed them to live as maybe satanic dime-gods creating their own worlds for themselves over time.
An estate in the Westminster Standards seems to be a state of being rather than a physical area, although it also seems to coincide with that meaning since the garden is different than the thermodynamic Earth environment.
"Question 14-What is sin?
Answer-Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God."
I haven't anything to add to that.
"Question 15- What was the sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate wherein they were created?
Answer-The sin whereby our first parents fell from the estate where they were created, was their eating the forbidden fruit."
Repeating the entire question in the answer; that is formal.
"Question 16-Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression?
Answer-The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself but for all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation,sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression."
This question-answer is a fair example of how the Westminster Standards misinterpret the historical relationship of Adam and Eve to mankind in Genesis. In their day the information was correct enough, and pro forma I technically agree with it still, yet there is still disagreement about implicit, unsaid historical assumptions the writers of the standards had.
Question 16 has a lengthy footnote comment reiterating the answer. they have also quoted Paul from Romans 5:12-19 in support..."Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed, upon all men,for that all have sinned :[for until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law]...For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one man many shall be made righteous."
This question is a pivotal place of error for the authors of the catechism. They assume that Adam passed on a sin organically rather than in the sense that Paul explained in Romans 5:12-21 whereby sin already existed in the world but it was not imputed to mankind. it was not imputed until Adam and Eve fell from their metaphysical garden and brought knowledge of the law to mankind.
The logical alternative otherwise is that God created Adam and Eve knowing that they had sin originally but did not impute it to them until their first overt act of disobedience whereat he deported them from the Garden so they could start a race of sinners to populate the planet. That scenario seems improbable.
It is much more reasonable to assume that Adam and Eve were a test case for mankind when mankind had neared the age of reason at the modern era of evolution, they failed the test, lost their special privileges and perks of being in the garden of God such as conditional immortality (that last maybe a few days before they lost it?) and were cast out to live with the general population that had never been immortal and were subject already to birth, death and so forth-natural generation. As special test subjects Adam and Eve were exempt from the problems of temporal existence and natural generation until they were booted from the Garden. Over time their descendants lost that residual longer than normal life span genetics or whatever glory of God let them have such. Mankind fell too from its state of primordial innocence because of the arrival of the first parents of the chosen people who had knowledge of the law and of the difference between good and evil. I would think that is one reason why the murder of Abel by Cain is especially significant-it is an example of egregious breaking of the law and of God acting as Judge and Executive officer of judgment upon Cain. Cain was fearful of being killed by mankind in general as he wandered cast out from his own society, so God placed a mark upon him and gave a penalty for anyone that would kill Cain. That also would bring knowledge of the law to mankind wherever Cain journeyed.
The catechism authors and I are in prima facie agreement because of the way the question and answers are phrased, yet there is substantive disagreement on mankind's existence before Adam and Eve, and of the way that mankind became guilty of sin. I say that mankind got it through the arrival of the law and knowledge of the law, while the catechists believe they got it through inheritance as children of Adam and Eve.
I do not think that all people are descended from Adam and Eve-just Christians are sort of descended from Adam and Eve so far as they are the first chosen people and they received covenants as the first of chosen people that ended up being called Jews that received covenants. Jesus was a Jew and brought the final covenant in order that people can return with his work and blood to a Garden of Eden kind of righteousness and relationship with God. Adam and Eve lacked Jesus Christ to help them in the Garden. When God knew they couldn't make it on their own, neither would mankind be able to make it on their own, so he relocated Adam and Eve to that incorrigibly corrupt and mortal mankind where none were righteous in order that they too might have a way unto God.
When one considers that without the grace of God arriving through Adam and Eve and all of the work of the Jews, prophets, Lord and Holy Spirit to present a light in the darkness, mankind that were already spiritually dead as biological beings had not a clue about where to go from Earth...they were lost in the dark, abyssal void of deep space, thunder and the wild kingdom; inclusive of themselves.
Q. 17. Into what estate did the fall bring mankind?
A. The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.
The Shorter Catechism has a lot of footnotes or 'proofs' that one ought to read to learn about the reasoning of the authors. In this question and answer they have transferred the sin and misery of Adam and Eve unto all of mankind, without that connection being made in Genesis. It is a kind of adding together of syllogistic premises to arrive at a wrong although somewhat harmless conclusion.
It is true that mankind had sin and misery before the fall. probably they also had sin and misery before the fall-they just didn't know about sin until Adam and Eve brought the law and the bad news to them.
God informed Adam and Eve that they would have suffering, and in comparison to the life of Riley they had in the the garden of Eden it is true they did. becoming temporal beings in a thermodynamics physics made them mortal and suffer with reproduction and getting food-energy to stay alive. Adam and Eve were better off in the aetemporal Garden physics of Spirit than becoming ordinary rooting about mortals hunting and gathering, plowing and building with political goons seeking to rule.
There is nothing at all about mankind mentioned in the 'sentence' given in the 'proof text' that refers to all of mankind instead of just Adam and Eve. The death sentence to Adam and Eve was spiritual death rather than physical-for they assuredly continued to exist in a temporal-non-spiritual form. Mankind too in the natural state was spiritual dead once they had received the law with arrival of Adam, Eve and knowledge of the difference between good and evil.
Here is the scripture 'proof' for the question-answer 17; "Gen. 3:16–19, 23. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.... Therefore the L ORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. Rom. 3:16. Destruction and misery are in their ways. Rom. 5:12. Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned ... Eph. 2:1. And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins."
"Q. 18. Wherein consists the sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell?
A. The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists in
the guilt of Adam’s first sin, the want of original righteousness, and
the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called origi-
nal sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from
it. "
This question-answer has copious 'proofs'. The answer explicitly acknowledges the 'corruption of his whole nature'. Adam and Eve were changed or conformed to the present human thermodynamic mold. That is logical since they would no longer be living in trans-temporal Eden but on normal earth instead. There isn't anything said about corruption in Genesis though-it is a change-yet not necessarily a corruption. The physical body and expulsion were necessary to prevent Adam and eve from eating of the tree of life-it was a kind of containment facility in earth acting as a firewall between them and Eden.
The original sin that Adam and Eve perpetrated was willful disobedience to God. If they were a representative test case made in perfect conditions that flunked, then mankind assuredly in it's temporal condition were not capable of anything good either plainly. Mankind were completely depraved sinners without regard for God.
When mankind was evolved to a critical I.Q. threshold of accountability Adam and Eve were made and tested, failed, and mankind was determined to be spiritually dead. Originally mankind was part of the 'all of heaven and earth' creatures that worship God in some sort of primeval natural way. When mankind became ready to dominate the animals and think so much better than animals with less well developed brains it was confirmed that they were incapable of anything besides thermodynamic willfulness and a desire to sin. At least that's the way I see it.
So I have changed my opinion about original sin a little. Having a thermodynamic body means an inherent desire to sin; consume energy, steal, lie, reproductive sex activities without concern for niceties-that is what all of mankind has and have had since they were made evolved by God and arrived in the final hour of day six, probably at the last second of the time-line. Mankind were made without sin, yet they were evolved along with the animals and so had the potential to become sinful when they reached an age of intellectual accountability as homo sapiens sapiens and were informed by Adam and Eve that their conduct was inexcusable. Mankind thus has sin implicitly because of his physical nature and Adam and Eve were converted into complete human temporal forms. That reminds me a little of the free trial period of full service in some computer thing that expires and then one gets a reduced, inferior product version (unless one pays for the full product). In the case of Adam, Eve and humanity, only God himself as the Son could pay that debt.
Adam and Eve though were not made of such stuff as normal humans when in the Garden.. They were raised as nearly perfect beings without thermodynamic challenges and yet they still sin. their original sin was that of disobedience while the general population of mankind never had the opportunity to be non-temporal and sinless. mankind's sinlessness was of being unaware of sin and knowledge rather than found in their conduct. When mankind were just animals doing their usual rapes, murders, pillaging, cannibalism etc it wasn't counted as sin. Adam and Eve brought them the news they were sinners. That may seem like bad news however it was actually good news. Mankind had a judgment passed upon it already when it reached its age of accountability being better than animals intellectually. It was founded that they were lost and could only be saved through the direct planning of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Shorter Catechism authors conflate mankind all as being children of Adam and Eve ( in error I think), and that adversely affects their interpretation of Genesis regarding distribution events, and nature of mankind-and today it forms a barrier toward rational interpretation of scripture and natural history.
Following are some of the 'proofs' for question 18...
"u. Rom. 3:10. As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. Col. 3:10.
And [ye] have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of
him that created him. Eph. 4:24. ... and that ye put on the new man, which after
God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
w. Ps. 51:5. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive
me. John 3:6. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit. Rom. 3:18. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Rom. 8:7–8.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. Eph.
2:3. ... among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our
flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the chil-
dren of wrath, even as others.
x. Gen. 6:5. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Ps.
53:1–3. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have
done abominable iniquity: there is none that doeth good. God looked down from
heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that
did seek God. Every one of them is gone back: they are altogether become filthy; there
is none that doeth good, no, not one. Matt. 15:19. For out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. Rom.
3:10–18, 23. As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that
understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way,
they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison
of asps is under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: destruction and misery are in their ways: and the way of peace
have they not known: there is no fear of God before their eyes.... For all have sinned,
and come short of the glory of God. Gal. 5:19–21. Now the works of the flesh are
manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry,
witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings,
murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I
have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the
kingdom of God. James 1:14–15. But every man is tempted, when he is drawn
away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth
sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death."
The above is true of mankind now as it was since they arrived at modern human status and were informed of the law. When humans were merely animals they acted like animals and were innocent of moral corruption. Does one consider a tiger morally guilty for eating an antelope?
Animals were probably made with full thermodynamic characteristics from the beginning, and mankind except for Adam and Eve probably were too. I don't think that the general human population were immortals and holy and with knowledge in some sort of Garden of Eden sense and then lost all that when Adam and Eve arrived in the equivalent of some sort of mass waveform collapse making them mortal humans that infected everyone on earth with mortal human waveform collapse from saintly immortality.
Of course primitivists insist that everyone is descended from Adam and Eve genetically. I had written above of why I disagree with that reversal of order of Genesis chapter one and two, or the insertion of chapter two into the beginning of day six in chapter one before mankind was created. Adam was created singularly to start with, so he as an individual he doesn't best fit the description of 'mankind' being created on day six as well as many people be created or evolved would besides.
On a scientific basis, common ancestors of all of existing humanity go back in some cases as far as 200,000 years. That is that is how long ago some of the ancestors of today's races drifted apart. Negroes and whites are racially most distant, American Indians are genetically first cousins to Euro-Americans. One needs to throw out ordinary genetics to support a common ancestor thesis before that, and it just seems silly. I am not conforming my opinion about Adam and Eve to science however, rather I have looked at the obvious Biblical order and compared that with what science has found about nature. Thus I made that comment.
"Q. 19. What is the misery of that estate whereinto man fell?
A. All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, y are un-
der his wrath z and curse, a and so made liable to all the miseries of
this life, b to death c itself, and to the pains of hell forever. d"
Question 19 concludes the creation questions portion of the catechism. I haven't so much to say about the remainder of the catechism as on these several points.
It is notable how the authors of the catechism continue here to conflate Adam and Eve 'and all of mankind'. I believe that mankind pre-existed Adam and Eve, not that they followed via natural birth alone. The opinion does matter on little technical points.
I agree for instance with question 19's answer on the face of it. Regard though that in the question they posit all of mankind as having fell instead of Adam and Eve. The answer also has "all of mankind by their fall" . In the Westminster Interpretation God created Adam and Eve in a special garden, who then sinned and were cast out to the world to populate the world with sinners by the billions and billions eventually. That is a counterintuitive way of correcting the lost.
I like the idea that mankind was made and were innocent as animals evolving in the world through various primate branches until they arrived at modern homo sapiens sapiens intellectual status whereat Adam and Eve were made, tested and reproached for failing the obedience test. Then, like sourdough starter they were cast out of the garden into the general population of humanity to let mankind know they were lost, under the curse of God for being such sinful creatures, and needed to become right with God.
In that approach mankind while made to evolve and eventually be under the curse of God for sinful behavior and sloppy, animal habits at least were intelligent enough and fortunate enough to have the chance to be saved by the Lord eventually and live eternally with God,
I wondered once while rowing a boat a 100 miles in a semi-wilderness in Alaska about why God created mankind. It is said that it is to worship and enjoy God in the WCF. it may be that God likes to have sentient beings exist besides himself. If there were just rocks, minerals and stars it might be pretty yet also pretty boring. Animals are nice to watch and photograph; feed some blue jays some breadcrumbs etc and they are like wild pets that return, and that interact and that I can recognize. When I walk the five miles from town they seem to wait about a half mile away and squawk a greeting and fly through the woods following along waiting for me to arrive and put out a cracker or too that they swiftly devour. The problem with wildlife is that it has limited vocabulary. A Universe without sentient beings in it might be less than interesting over eternity, so the solution may be that of creating intelligent beings that are not spiritually dead, swinish louts. It's only one way of looking at it.
I will post the 'proofs' for question 19; "and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
y. Gen. 3:8, 24. And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the
garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the pres-
ence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.... So he drove out the man;
and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword
which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. John 8:34, 42, 44. Jesus
answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant
of sin.... Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I
proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.... Ye
are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer
from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Eph. 2:12. ... that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the com-
monwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope,
and without God in the world. Eph. 4:18. ... having the understanding darkened,
being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of
the blindness of their heart.
z. John 3:36. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that
believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. Rom.
1:18. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and un-
righteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness. Eph. 2:3. ... among
whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath,
even as others. Eph. 5:6. Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of
these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
a. Gal. 3:10. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for
it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in
the book of the law to do them. Rev. 22:3. And there shall be no more curse: but the
throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him.
b. Gen. 3:16–19. Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow
and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be
to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou
hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in
sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring
forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou
eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Job 5:7. Yet man is born unto trouble, as the
sparks fly upward. Eccl. 2:22–23. For what hath man of all his labour, and of the
vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are
sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also
vanity. Rom. 8:18–23. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest
expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the
creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath
subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know
that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not
only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves
groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
c. Ezek. 18:4. Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul
of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Rom. 5:12. Wherefore, as by one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men,
for that all have sinned ... Rom. 6:23. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of
God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. d. Matt. 25:41, 46. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.... And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
2 Thess. 1:9. ... who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the pres-
ence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. Rev. 14:9–11. And the third
angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his
image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his
indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the
holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth
up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and
his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name."
All of the above is true. it does take points from all over the Bible however in order to support the general premise of Adam and Eve as first parents with every sort of doom and misery place on their descendants. That entirely misses the subtlety of mankind existing independently and prior to Adam and Eve in the natural human form in the same physical thermodynamic condition as animals, who preceded their existence, and of how mankind came to be cursed by the law because of their implicitly fallen nature. ..human nature. Animals are forever exempt from being under the curse, largely because they are too stupid to be held accountable for their swinishness and eating other creatures behavior. It is somewhat ironic that modern secular evolutionists also seek to be morally unaccountable for behavior that is 'natural' in the absence of any God authority.
Adam and Eve and mankind did all experience a fall in the same time period, with Eve stimulating the fall of Adam and the couple together stimulating the fall of mankind by informing them of the knowledge of the difference between good and evil I suppose-or whatever it required to bring them under the doom of the law. Mankind was doomed as they grew in intellectual power and knowledge anyway I would think, and thus the soteriological efforts invested by God through the chosen people/Israel were great blessings.
I think that this portion of the proof would apply also to the condition of mankind before Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, that is when mankind were no longer animals and under the grace of innocence. That time ended with the arrival of Adam and Eve. Mankind did not require a change of their nature physically as did Adam and Eve to live in the degenerate milieu (in comparison to that of the Garden of Eden)...
"Eph. 2:12. ... that at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope,and without God in the world. Eph. 4:18. ... having the understanding darkened,being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart."
Adam and Eve were the first parents of descendants that would become the nation of Israel.
In summary; in the questions and answers pertaining to creation I largely concur with the form yet apply the material differently. That is somewhat of a paradox yet a result of agreeing that genesis is true though finding the truth is arrived at in a somewhat different way that probably has no soteriological consequences.
"Q. 20. Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?
A. God, having out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer."
Here are some of the proofs for the answer-"f. Gen. 3:15. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Gen. 17:7. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. Ex. 19:5–6. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel.
All of that seems to support the establishment of Adam and Eve as first parents of a nation of priests to mankind. It becomes somewhat difficult to think that God established Adam and Eve as first parents of a nation of priests unto their children and offspring.
When one moves to chapter 4 of Genesis the firstborn of Adam and Eve-Cain-kills the second born-his brother Abel. Cain is a tiller of soil-that is a user of tools, a blacksmith, and inventor and his offering of spuds or some vegetable perhaps was not as well received by the Lord-who was present in the town on 'the face of the earth', as the sacrifice of Abel who was a herder and brought a nice, fluffy sheep. Cain was jealous and killed abel-a role model for killing the firstborn Son of God in a sense. So Abel was a kind of first lamb of God sacrificed on earth, in an inverse sort of way, appropriately since the first-born son of man was Cain who was a killer. Jesus reverses that too-calling himself the son of man, while being at the same time the Son of God and the Lamb of God.
Cain flees to the land of Nod after being judged by God. He takes a wife there, and presumably the land of Nod was already peopled by mankind. The evidence tilts a little more toward that direction than of Cain taking one of the daughter of Adam and Eve with him if any had been born yet. Nod was east of Eden, so Adam and Eve must have lived somewhere near Eden, which was guarded by Cherubim with flaming swords (not the Jedi).
Chapter 6 of Genesis has the famous passages about sons of God and daughters of men as well as 'giants in those days'. I will make a few comments on that.
Adam's descendants could have been the sons of God. Since they were longer lived they may have had other characteristics that differed them a little from ordinary mankind. Those characteristics may have faded away with out-breeding. maybe out-breeding and dispersion of genomic integrity is why Adam and Eve's line became shorter-lived. God capped mankind's maximum life span at 120 in verse 3 of chapter 6. God explained that he did not always want to strive with man for that he is also flesh. Even so right on down the line to Abraham, some of mankind-perhaps those descended as sons of God, lived longer than normal human life spans. In chapter 7 verses 22-23 Serug lived 230 years.
My thought is that mankind evolved in their struggles with other primates and wildlife and became dominant. Even so their were some large Neanderthals remaining perhaps until 35,000 years ago, and many half-breed and partly Neanderthals with bigger, stronger bone structure that combined with taller human lines might have been regarded as giants. The daughters of mankind were attractive to the sons of God-those of Adam and Eve's line, and so they took them as wives.
About that time God became wroth with mankind because the giants interbreeding with daughters of men and sons of God interbreeding with daughters of men had some sort of corrupt, industrial society of I would guess war and licentiousness, tyranny and complete disregard for the somewhat more righteous clan of Adam and Eve living closer to Eden. Thus the first complete destructive flood of people living in that region was in the cards. That culture of corruption would soon be drowned under a flood that covered the whole earth (dirt) of lower Mesopotamia where all of the action was located.
Nod being east of eden may have been somewhere close to the edge of the Mesopotamian lowlands area that is bordered by the highlands going up to modern Iran. Cain built a city in Nod and named it after his first-born son-Enoch.
When God concluded that only Noah and immediate family were worth saving a flood destroyed the culture of corruption. It might have been appropriate that the Ark came to rest at the highest point in Urartu-perhaps very near where the land of Nod and the city of Enoch had been. The time-line for that sort of thing works pretty well with the end of the Neanderthal live, settlement of the Middle East, first appearance of settlements and civilization and end of the late Wisconsin Ice Age with sea level rise, coastal flooding and surging of flood rivers from glacier melt, rainfall changes and so forth. Somewhere circa 15,000 B.C. today's deserts of Saudi Arabia stopped being verdant forest like paradises-rainfall stopped evidently with the change of climate at the end of the Ice Age-a period of global warming I suppose. Jericho was founded to have been a settlement as long ago as 10,000 B.C.
"Q. 21. Who is the Redeemer of God’s elect?
A. The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, g
who, being the eternal Son of God, h became man, i and so was, and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures, and one person, forever. k"
Amen.
"Q. 22. How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?
A. Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a
true body, and a reasonable soul, l being conceived by the power of
the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, m
yet without sin. n"
It was necessary I suppose, for modal logic constancy, that the Lord had to be a mortal human in the fallen state of thermodynamics to overcome that state. People in that thermodynamic estate naturally sin and are lost. Jesus Christ was able to live in that mortal estate fully human and yet not sin.
Jesus as the Son would not sin. I think that the Holy Ghost may have tweaked Mary's egg such that it conceived in a better-than-average way though...one that minimized certain inclinations to sin, and that would be fair enough. Jesus would have experienced not only innate sexual temptations and perhaps temptations from food (what if the devil had said 'turn these rocks into pepperoni pizza and eggs rolls, or Haagen Das chocolate chip mint ice cream', he would have encountered temptations to lie or steal. The Lord though, being of the Spirit, would have eschewed such temptations rather easily I suppose. The material world is made more attractive when its ice cream is coated with syrupy concoctions like an ice cream sundae...that sort of thing doesn't go on forever though. As it is written-everyone returns to forever.
Questions 23-26
Amen
Q. 27. Wherein did Christ’s humiliation consist?
A. Christ’s humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a
low condition, a made under the law, b undergoing the miseries of this life, c the wrath of God, d and the cursed death of the cross; e in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time. f"
One wonders why Jesus stayed under the power of death for three days, and what that consisted of? Plainly if he had just not died when crucified and had super-hero powers of invulnerability to death he would not have fulfilled God's plan of salvation for the elect. Even so one wonders if Jesus slept for three days in a manner of speaking. God allowed Jesus to suffer the full wrath of the penalty of sin so he got the grand tour of whatever befalls those whom physically die. Also three days dead made it plain to people in Jerusalem that the Lord was really dead, and not just off stage for a while perhaps soaking in the pool of Siloam or somewhere that no one noticed for a short time.
If Jesus had been crucified, taken down from the cross and buried quickly and returned the next day some might have suspected that he had been given some kind of pain-killing sleep drug, that opiates made him enjoy the beating and crucifixion, that the fellow who carried the cross for him replaced a light-weight balsa wood prop with a real one, and that the spear was a spring-loaded retractable point-end prop, and maybe that special effects put a bag of chicken blood made to look fleshy on his side so that the spear would poke it and make it seem like a bloody wound. Three days dead is probably more time than martinets with a special effects department would have had patience for.
"Q. 28. Wherein consisteth Christ’s exaltation?"
A. Christ’s exaltation consisteth in his rising again from the
dead on the third day, g in ascending up into heaven, h in sitting at the
right hand of God the Father, i and in coming to judge the world at the last day. k"
If one reads the footnotes or proofs to the catechism answers there is a remarkable depth of insight accessible into the sovereign work of God in creation, in history in metaphysics transforming humanity now and in the post-temporal environment. Christology is illuminated in several of the quest questions, answers and proofs.
"Q. 29. How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ?
A. We are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ,
by the effectual application of it to us by his Holy Spirit. l"
"Q. 30. How doth the Spirit apply to us the redemption purchased by Christ?
A. The Spirit applied to us the redemption purchased by Christ,
by working faith in us, m and thereby uniting us to Christ in our effec-
tual calling. n"
"Q. 31. What is effectual calling?
A. Effectual calling is the work of God’s Spirit, whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, o and renewing our wills, p he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, q freely offered to us in the gospel. r"
This is another of several questions and answers on practical matters of salvation. Effectual calling is a concept not commonly explained in contemporary churches. Points 31-39 should be the subject for Sunday sermons. People could also stand to hear plain talk about the several ways of interpreting Genesis and creation while agreeing nominally at least with the Westminster Standards. Most pastors in evangelical churches for instance would probably belief that evolution must be in contradiction to Deistic creation, or Biblical creation fundamentalism, and that is incorrect. The two are compatible with the actual content of genesis and the Westminster standards.
"Q. 32. What benefits do they that are effectually called partake of in this life?
A. They that are effectually called do in this life partake of justi-
fication, adoption, and sanctification, and the several benefits which
in this life do either accompany or flow from them. s"
"Q. 33. What is justification?
A. Justification is an act of God’s free grace, t wherein he pardoneth
all our sins, u and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, w only for the
righteousness of Christ imputed to us, x and received by faith alone. y"
"Q. 34. What is adoption?
A. Adoption is an act of God’s free grace, z whereby we are re-
ceived into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the
sons of God. a"
"Q. 35. What is sanctification?
A. Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, b whereby we
are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, c and are en-
abled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness. d
"Q. 36. What are the benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification?
A. The benefits which in this life do accompany or flow from
justification, adoption, and sanctification, are, assurance of God’s
love, e peace of conscience, f joy in the Holy Ghost, g increase of grace, and perseverance therein to the end. i"
"Q. 37. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at death?
A. The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in
holiness, k and do immediately pass into glory; l and their bodies, be-
ing still united to Christ, m do rest in their graves, till the resurrection. n"
Most of these questions and answers in this section are presented in such a way that I have little to add unto them besides an 'amen'. Thus this morning I was lucky to have a dream before awakening that pertains to the topic a little. The dream was about finding a paint job self-employed.
I had been given information that there was a lady interested in having me paint her building. I could not remember exactly where the building was or what it looked like, yet I had already talked with her briefly before, being introduced by someone else that I could not recall at the moment. I was therefore ready to go and talk to her again; I had an address, and a friend apparently, William F. Buckley Jr. was driving me to her place to get the work prospect started.
Buckley was just matter of fact about getting to the address. He had no trouble finding it whereas I was not at all sure that we were even looking in the right neighborhood. The numbers of addresses can sometimes be close yet the actual one is located far off for some technical reason.
The building turned out to be a rather large two or three story apartment building that was rather gray and magenta trimmed with peeling paint regularly about it as if there was a technical flaw in the application of material by the last painter. Buckley stopped the car on the street and I got out, walked down into the property to find the office and saw a sign that said' office' illuminated in neon. I stepped up on one concrete step to a screen door for a brief foyer beyond which, still higher up, was another door to a residence area and knocked. Like many live-in motel and apartment spaces the manager lived there-or owner, and Adda Something or other stepped up to the door looking down upon me from a couple of feet.
She had shoulder-length, straight grey hair and was rather sickly. I didn't know what was wrong with her, yet she seemed to be returned from hospital or readying to go to hospital for treatment of some undisclosed malady. We exchanged a couple of words when Bill Buckley walked up. I introduced him to Adda, and was thinking a bit about the oddity of the celebrity introduction to Adda.
One of the late W.F. Buckley Jr.'s last books was titled 'Closer My God, Unto Thee' I believe. I have never read it-it was probably good reading. After the cold war, in a sense there wasn't much more for him to write, and his work was rather finished anyway before his death.
The paint job presented many challenges for me that were practical immediately. For one thing I had Mr. Buckley with the motor running standing by. I didn't want to take his time. The again I was a long way from anyplace beside the paint job, and needed to give her an estimate of the cost, and so had that very large problem of the stretching of financial space-time that exists on a large project. Another problem was that as an unlicensed contractor I would have her by the materials and I would just supply the labor, and she was in no shape to acquire materials. In fact she didn't look healthy enough to trouble her about buying materials- I am sure she would have liked everything to be included in the price, yet I don't usually work that way.
With no transportation moving dozens of gallons of paint around can be challenging. I usually need to improvise equipment such as tall ladders too. Usually the savings for a very competitive lower-than-average price has just come out of the cost of my labor.
My work is usually done at near non-profit, except that since it is just labor any inc9ome at all is something of a profit.
With the health of Adda being what it was I could have given an estimate of anywhere between a thousand and six thousand dollars for labor-Probably I would have used a low end estimate of 2500 dollars because she was sickly in appearance, though perhaps prosperous-I wouldn't know. Fortunately I woke up and was extracted from the difficulty, rather financially troubling yet interesting dream, and just had some content to write of for a comment on a portion of this question-answer.
I think that W.F. Buckley Jr. returning to transport me to a paint job would be an example of spirit after death going in glory to God while the body waits with the Lord for resurrection and judgment and eternal life with God. Spirit is simply different from material things such as bodies and paint, apartments and cars. God allocates where spirit appears to exist too, before during and after one's mortal experience of life, and has created life and life situations-possibly even pre-determining dream situations, that appear for those of faith. I suppose that those not of faith don't recognize some or most works of God, yet they too may have what Sartre named a book 'Troubled Sleep' in order to stir their conscious thought toward spiritual things.
"Q. 38. What benefits do believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?
A. At the resurrection, believers, being raised up in glory, o shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, p and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God q to all eternity. r"
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