Reflections
on Biblical Themes by an Octogenarian
Reuben J. Swanson
REFLECTIONS ON BIBLICAL THEMES BY AN OCTOGENARIAN
Copyright © 2007 Reuben J. Swanson. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf & Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.
ISBN 10: 1-59752-877-3
ISBN 13: 978-1-59752-877-1
EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7627-6
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Dedicated to
My Students
Who over the Years
Stimulated My Thought
and Enlarged my Growth
Spiritually and
Intellectually
Foreword
¶ This series of essays represents my personal reflections upon a few Biblical themes that are relevant for my own faith and life. They do not, of course, exhaust my own thoughts and reflections upon these and other Biblical themes, but are indicators of the direction I take in my understanding and interpretation of Scripture. My insights and understanding of these themes have grown out of a lifetime in the ministry, in the classroom, and from my research into the text of the Greek New Testament. My analysis and viewpoint may not be acceptable to all readers, but how can we grow and expand our minds and spirits unless we consider points of view that seem at first to be inimical to our own faith and life?
My personal observations have led to the conclusion that there is much Biblical illiteracy manifested among people who have been life-long members of the church. I do not mean this to be ignorance of detail and general information of the Bible, but rather a lack of understanding of the deeper meaning of Scripture and its implications for our daily life. This lack of spiritual insight and understanding was well characterized by Bishop Hans Lilje in a speech delivered as long ago as 1948, who said, “The American people are hollow inside.” He was speaking out of his own personal experiences as an anti-Nazi who was delivered fortuitously from death at the hands of Adolf Hitler. His observation, as a matter of fact, appropriately describes the universal condition of most Christians. What is even more dreadful to me is that we are not really very disturbed about our lack of spiritual depth. We most often avoid or are upset by difficult spiritual problems and questions. We are satisfied with a rather naive and childlike faith and understanding.
I am reminded of a Charles Schultz “Peanuts” cartoon of the ’60s. Charlie Brown said to Linus, “You don’t mean to tell me you bring that blanket to school with you? Don’t all the kids laugh at you?” Linus replied, “Nobody laughs at a straight A average.” Many of us look upon the Bible and our understanding of it as a security blanket. The possession of a Bible and our knowledge of it is our salvation. We have emptied the cross of Christ of its meaning and purpose. Knowledge has become our salvation, rather than a dying and rising experience with Christ as the Apostle Paul sets forth so succinctly in Galatians 2.19-20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
It is my hope and prayer that these “Reflections” will stimulate thought and discussion, so that we together may attain to the full stature of the man or the woman in Christ. If this be the end result of my thoughts and reflections, I will give thanks to God who has created me and all that exists, to God who has redeemed me and made me to be a partaker of his gracious gift of life in heaven on earth.
In the Beginning
¶ How did our universe come into existence? Was it created? Or did it just happen in a great bang that occurred approximately fifteen billion years ago? Can we speak definitively about time periods of such magnitude? Or must we be silent and only let the affirmation of faith speak for us? Without question creation is a most nebulous subject for most of us. There are specialists who probe the vast expanses of the universe with powerful telescopes, who measure radiation in outer space emitted by that initial gigantic blast, as well as the radial velocity of distant objects that demonstrate to them that we live in an expanding universe with great distant galaxies larger than our Milky Way traveling in space at almost the speed of light. The topography of our planet Earth has been shaped by the inexorable forces of nature—wind, water, heat and cold—over more than four billions of years. In contrast, there are religious enthusiasts with very modest estimates of the age of the universe, who depict it as created in six of our working days only a few thousand years ago by the word of God. All the features of outer and inner space—galaxies, stars, planets, oceans, mountains, plains, minerals, fossils, living creatures—were brought into being and shaped into their present forms instantaneously by the word of the living and powerful God.
Is it possible to reconcile these two disparate views? To affirm that the picture of our universe painted by the scientist is largely authentic and at the same time to hold with the religious enthusiast that all has been created by God but over a tremendous span of time? Is there an irreconcilable conflict between a modern scientific understanding of the beginnings and of the evolution of our universe and a religious faith that attributes the existence of all that was, all that is, and all that will be to God?
My own point of view is that there is no conflict except in the minds of those who hold dogmatically to one view to the exclusion of the other. A dogmatic point of view cannot be attributed to one side only, for there are scientific as well as religious bigots, scientists and religionists who subscribe to very circumscribed and narrow opinions upon the subject under discussion. The principle that I would advance is that the God of our religion and the God of our science are one and the same God. That is to say, the God who has created me and all that exists is the God who created the faith in me to believe this. There are many, many mysteries still unsolved in matters scientific and religious, but the answers we have as to the origins and the actualities of our existence and of the meaning of our existence originate from the one source—the Creator God.
The Biblical Accounts of Creation
The substance of this discussion will focus upon the biblical accounts of creation as these are reported in the Book of Genesis, chapters one and two. The reference to plural accounts may even come as a surprise to some readers, since the emphasis in the discussion of creation has mostly been upon the more familiar narrative in chapter one. There is a second, an older and more primitive account, in chapter two that has not often received the attention it deserves in our discussions. The later account in chapter one portrays creation as an orderly progression from the origins of light to the origins of man in a series of events over a six day period; day after day God brings into existence higher and higher forms of material and physical existence until finally the ultimate is reached with the creation of man in the image of God himself.
This account of an orderly progression compares favorably in many aspects to the scientific understanding of the origins and development of life as set forth in the theory of evolution. The use of the term “theory” should not prejudice us against any particular viewpoint, scientific or religious, since there are no evidences to prove conclusively a case for either point of view. Ultimately, we must admit that whether we approach our subject from a scientific or from a religious point of view, we rely upon the premise of faith and not upon fact. That we have observed “things” to work in a certain way does not at all demonstrate that we know all there is to know upon the subject. We must acknowledge in all humility that what we think we know we know in part and always from a particular and subjective point of view. The scientist approaches the subject matter in a subjective way because he or she has been conditioned by a subjective system or society to observe and to examine the subject matter according to certain preconceived