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Psalm 139: God in Knowledge, Space, and Time

21 Jun

Reading Psalm 139 with friends this morning, I noted something interesting. The first two thirds of the Psalm can be broken in to three parts, each focusing on a different aspect of God.

God Surpasses Human Knowledge

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

In the first six verses, the focus is on God’s knowledge. As verse six sums up, God has a degree of knowledge which is impossible for humans to achieve. While we think man has achieved great things in knowledge, the Lord knew each accomplishment before us. His knowledge is so vast, and in some means different, that it completely encompasses our abilities.

God Is Not Limited By Human Space

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

In the next section, the focus shifts from knowledge to space. Our human conception of space is such that if I am here, I am not there. This is not true for God, and the Psalmist realizes it. It’s not simply that God follows the Psalmist from heaven to Sheol to the other side of the sea, but that when the Psalmist reaches each place he realizes that God is there too.

A friend also pointed out that God does not see as we see. While darkness means we cannot see, “even the darkness is not dark to” God. Our human understanding of sight is not God’s sight.

God Exceeds Human Time

13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

Finally, the psalmist examines God in time. Like our human understanding of space, our understanding of time is I was in the past, I am now, and I will be in the future. I am always in the present and have both a past and a future. Not so for God. Our days in the future are known to him “when as yet there was none of them.” God somehow exists in time as we do not.

The psalmist concludes with a section which reflects on these unknowable attributes of God, and there meaning for our lives:

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain!
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

The final verses seem to be the only appropriate response to a God who is so utterly more than us in knowledge, space, and time.

Easy Questions?

20 Aug

The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 3

You get the impression in the beginning of Mark that Jesus’ way is entirely foreign to the people of that time. So many questions!

The really sad part is that there are certain questions that should be so easy—”Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” Does it even have to be the Sabbath to know the answer to that question? It’s apparent!

It makes you wonder what easy decisions we’re missing in our own lives.

The Evolution Debate as Culture Wars

16 Jan

There are too many good insights in this article to quote them all:

Whatever else Texas may have going for it, teaching religion in science class is inexcusable, whether or not it’s dressed in the deceptive language of intelligent design.  My (very) conservative Catholic grandma believes that evolution and faith are compatible.  Plenty of people do.  That’s because they are compatible.  The evolution vs. creation debate is less about that issue than it is about cultural dominance in general. It’s just one battleground chosen in the ongoing culture wars.

Needless to say, you should just go read it:

When the overwhelming scientific consensus points to evolutionary biology as the explanation for life, Christians have two choices.  They can say that this is consistent with their religion (God created everything including the field of evolutionary biology); or they can attempt to subvert the overwhelming consensus to fit their own narrative. Conservative institutions like, say, the Catholic Church have chosen the former over the latter.

From “Roger Ebert, Ben Stein, and the culture wars”.

An Excellent Article on Evolution and Religion

2 Jan

Leslie Tomory, who has just finished a PhD in the history of science and technology at the University of Toronto, has an excellent piece entitled “The shock and awe of creation.” In it he takes aim at the idea that evolution is inherently atheistic (an idea he labels “evolutionism”) and examines the roots of philosophical resistance to evolution.

The science of evolutionary biology is very well established, and the residual tension between religion and evolutionary biology harms both. On one hand, it makes the scientific work evolutionary biologists suspect in the eyes of many, and on the other, it makes religion appear like a regressive force. It is far better to reject the bundling of evolutionary biology with evolutionism, the real crux of the problem, than to wage a war over the minutiae of evolutionary biology, which should not be problematic from a religious point of view. Finally, accepting theistic evolution does not diminish the beauty and awe we can feel when contemplating God’s creation. On the contrary, God’s is manifest in his works, including in evolution.

This is exactly the sort of thought that we need in the struggle to combine these two fields in the popular mind.

A useful corollary to this article would be one examining the idea of God’s ordinary providence as paradox. The universe functions according to it’s own rules, yet it could not function without God. God is more directly involved than a watchmaker with his machine, yet at the same time less involved.

But, until I find or write said article, you can start by reading “The shock and awe of creation.”

Darwin: Is Creationism Presumptuous?

20 Dec

It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further we must suppose that there is a power, represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way or degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be preserved until a better is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alteration, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years; and during each year on millions of individuals of many kinds; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man?

- Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, Chapter 6 (emphasis added)

A fascinating observation, and one I was not expecting to encounter in On the Origin of Species.

Terry Pratchett on Religion

20 Dec

From Pharyngula we get this video of Terry Pratchett:

While understandable sentiments, the reference to humans as “fallen angels” makes me think that his theology might be just a bit off.

The assumption that religion and evolution cannot coincide puzzles me. An understanding of religion as socially evolved at least attempts to deal with the issue, rather than simply mocking it.

Put This One On the Reading List

19 Dec

From The Economist’s review of The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures:

Charles Darwin, whose idea of the sacred also came from an English private school, witnessed religion at its most primordial when he went to Australia in 1836. He found it horrifying: “nearly naked figures, viewed by the light of blazing fires, all moving in hideous harmony…”

Whatever Darwin’s personal sensibilities, Mr Wade is convinced that a Darwinian approach offers the key to understanding religion. In other words, he sides with those who think man’s propensity for religion has some adaptive function. According to this view, faith would not have persisted over thousands of generations if it had not helped the human race to survive. Among evolutionary biologists, this idea is contested. Critics of religion, like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, suggest that faith is a useless (or worse) by-product of other human characteristics.

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