Helm / Dennis The Genesis Factor

Probing Life's Big Questions
1. Auflage 2001
ISBN: 978-1-4335-1740-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten

Using the Socratic method, Helm and Dennis challenge readers to wrestle with Scripture itself rather than with systematic questions. This candid look at Genesis is an ideal apologetic against today's postmodern culture.

David R. Helm (MDiv, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of Christ Church Chicago. He also serves as chairman of the board of directors for the Charles Simeon Trust, an organization that promotes practical instruction in preaching. He is the coauthor (with Jon Dennis) of The Genesis Factor; a contributor to Preach the Word: Essays on Expository Preaching; and the author of The Big Picture Story Bible and 1-2 Peter and Jude in the Preaching the Word commentary series.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Helm, David R.

Dennis, Jon M.

Leseproben

1

A CONVERSATION
STARTER

Most of us have heard people asking life’s big questions. Such questions are timeless. They confront every living person and contemplate the greatest of themes. They unite us to all peoples of the past as well as to those who will follow. They are questions such as:

In today’s individualized way of viewing the world, some of these questions become personal: “Who am I?” “Where did I come from?” “Where am I going?” And, “Is there any divinely orchestrated meaning to my life?”

Many people today are eager to find answers to these big questions. The sales of Stephen Hawking’s book attest to this interest. The book was on the bestseller list for 237 weeks, has been translated into forty languages, and has sold one copy for every 750 people in the world.1

Concerning its popularity, Hawking writes,

The success of indicates that there is widespread interest in the big questions like: Where did I come from? And why is the universe the way it is?2

And doesn’t this “widespread interest in the big questions” make sense? After all, if we are to live with a proper sense of being human then shouldn’t we, at some point in our lives, pursue these questions? And if so, what intellectual traditions should guide our exploration? What voices should we be interacting with? Ideally, probing life’s big questions together would take place face-to-face around a table—in a local restaurant, perhaps, over a leisurely meal.There are already a host of voices at the table—people who are willing to interact with us.

SOME VOICES AT THE TABLE

There is, for instance, the voice of “Why all the talk about where we came from, or if there is a god? I believe what Carl Sagan said: ‘The cosmos is all there is, or has been, or will be.’”3

Naturalism will be a familiar voice for most of our readers. Naturalism holds that matter is the essence of reality. Some label this view “philosophical materialism.”

Naturalism, while clearly belonging at the table, may have some self-imposed limitations when it comes to the bigger questions of life. By design, it limits itself to that which can be externally verified. In the words of a magazine article on religion and science, “Science was for the real world: machines, manu

A Conversation Starter

factured things, medicines, guns, moon rockets. Religion was for everything else.”4

Lesslie Newbigin, in his perceptive book outlines how naturalism tends to relegate life’s big questions to the periphery. He argues that naturalism is limited to a closed system. It deals only in the world of facts and data; it is concerned with physics, not metaphysics; things, not things.5

What is good about naturalism is its impetus to exploration. At the same time, however, some people, while quite comfortable with naturalism, are uneasy with some of its implications. They feel something is missing in a world without God. Contemporary theologian David Wells describes the rise of this new voice for us. It is the voice of :

[T]he world, so recently emptied of the divine, is now awash with the supernatural intrusions, with strange voices and mystical experiences of every conceivable kind. . . . [I]f modernization has robbed our culture of the divine, it has in doing so also sown the seeds of longing for some inner sense of the supernatural.6

J. D. Salinger captures this voice poignantly in his short story “Teddy.” He describes an incident where a spiritually precocious youngster recalls how he arrived at his view of God while watching his little sister drink her milk: “ . . . all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God. I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God.”7

Shirley MacLaine is an advocate of this voice as well. “For you see,” she says, “each soul is its own god.You must never worship anyone or anything other than self. For are god.”8

Pervasive supernaturalism is the view that the universe is to be identified with God. God and nature are thought of as the same reality.9 New and popular expressions of this voice crop up everywhere today, especially in bookstores. You can’t miss the resurgence of interest in Eastern religions, mysticism, the New Age, spiritism, and the occult.

This zealous discovery of God in various places offers a rising sense of self to replace the fading notion of God. It leads some to declare that all things are really the same thing, and, therefore, all things are really God.

Alvin Plantinga, a philosopher at the University of Notre Dame, emphasizes the imaginative and creative aspect of this voice:

Here the fundamental idea—in sharp contrast to naturalism— is that we human beings, in some deep and important way, are ourselves responsible for the structure and nature of the world; it is we, fundamentally, who are the architects of the universe.10

That said, there are still other intellectual traditions vying for an opportunity to guide us in our exploration of life’s big questions. One such voice values the contribution of naturalism and is intrigued by the optimism of pervasive supernaturalism, yet wonders if there isn’t another way to address life’s big questions:

“What about What if life does have some ineffable or transcendant meaning to it?” The voice of destiny is imbedded in the movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. From the outset, this movie is one of those guy-meets-girl things. What makes it work for some is watching the relationship come together in ways that neither of them has control over. For believers in destiny, life is controlled by fate.

At this point, some readers might be growing uneasy not only with the number of voices willing to guide us through life’s big questions, but with the certitude of their answers. After all,

A Conversation Starter

most of us don’t line up easily or consistently behind any single voice or intellectual tradition. Rather, we prefer to hold on to a measure of about life’s big questions. Leo Strauss, who taught at the University of Chicago, expressed a life-long commitment to doubt with these words on the question of God’s existence:

Many of our contemporaries assume tacitly or even explicitly that we know that God as an omnipotent being does not exist. I believe that they are wrong; for how could we know that God as an omnipotent being does not exist? . . . I believe [it is] equally true that human reason cannot establish the existence of God. . . . From this it follows that . . . we are reduced to a state of doubt in regard to the most important question.11

Do you see what Strauss is saying? Life’s big questions demand a little reverence. He doesn’t want us to demean the majesty of the questions. A life-long position of doubt may be the most honest way to go.

And so we’ve come full circle in our search for guides, all the way back to Levin’s doubt. In a short time, a number of widely divergent viewpoints have been expressed. From Stephen Hawking to Carl Sagan, from Salinger and MacLaine to and Leo Strauss, everyone has an opinion about the universal questions that confront us.12

THE VOICE OF GENESIS

With this book we hope to add another voice to the list of those who might aid us in our search for answers—the voice of Genesis. Ordinarily today, people don’t turn to Genesis in their exploration of life’s big questions. After all, its voice speaks so definitively that it seems to chase all doubt away. It can appear to stifle our desire to probe life’s big questions. And yet, if we are intellectually honest, the voice of Genesis should at least be given a hearing. While it may not be the only perspective on life’s big questions, it is one at least worth some exploration. For centuries people have recognized that Genesis presents us with some very large answers to life’s universal questions. Doesn’t it make sense to try to listen to its voice—to hear the answers it proposes? Then you can come to your own conclusions about the integrity of its claims.

Some readers may be thinking,

But we’re not kidding.

We believe Genesis has a great contribution to make to the universal conversation on life’s big questions. In fact, we believe it does so clearly—even strikingly—in its opening verse. When...