Two Ways News is a weekly collaboration between Phillip Jensen and Peter Jensen – a newsletter and podcast on a topic to encourage gospel thinking for today (subscribe at twoways.news).
This first episode of a new series on Genesis 1-11 discusses these chapters. Should we be asking big questions of these chapters, or rather, do they ask big questions of us?
You’ll find a short series on these chapters at Genesis 1-11.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF GENESIS PART 1
Back to the Beginning
Phillip Jensen: Welcome to Two Ways News for 2025, as we start this year off together, I’m Phillip Jensen, and no longer do we have Tony Payne with us, but now we have our other guest who comes each week with us, well at least we plan to, namely my brother Peter, how are you, Peter?
Peter Jensen: Well, I am well. I’m looking forward to 2025 and to being with you. Good.
Phillip: Well, this year we’re looking at Genesis, Genesis 1-11 really. Last year we worked our way through Romans and we just thought, well, the opening chapters of Genesis open up so many questions for us that it’ll be a great passage to have as the backbone of the year. We’ll deal with other topics at different times of course. But please feel free to subscribe as you might well know too from previous years and recommend our podcast to other people if you enjoy it and if you don’t enjoy it, keep listening because it’s not here just for entertainment, we’re also here for learning. Peter is at least enjoying it, I saw a smile on his face. So that’s the shift that we’re moving to this year, from Tony to Peter. Peter, as you’ve gone around preaching and as you’ve spoken about things, what are the questions that people ask you about Genesis 1-11?
Peter: Well, obviously I think the big question is, is it historical? Is it scientific? Et cetera, et cetera. Does it match with what we now know about the world? I think that’s one of them. But more than that, I think there’s a considerable degree of questioning about who we are as human beings. That is the crucial issue of our age, I think. Who are we as human beings?
Phillip: As we preach on and speak on Genesis and on the Creator God, it also raises the question, doesn’t it, of the problem of suffering? Why is that?
Peter: Well, the God who is revealed to us in Genesis 1 and 2 is the good God, and we are beginning to sense his justice and so forth. But then from Genesis 3 onwards, suffering enters the world, and the whole history of the Bible from then on is the same as the human race, namely suffering in this world. But how is that consistent with his being, his essence? How is it consistent that he has allowed suffering to enter the world? That is the big question. Most of the apologetic questions that come up are, in a sense, easier to answer. This is the apologetic question, but on the other hand, it’s interesting that the Bible never blinks when it comes to this. It never shirks. It raises the issue knowingly, again and again. So it’s not as though the Bible is a book which gets around suffering somehow. The Bible looks at it and is a huge resource for us to understand.
Phillip: It’s the theme of the whole Bible, isn’t it?
Peter: Yes it is. As is sin. And indeed, obviously when you get to the last chapters and the future is described, “I will wipe away all tears”. There is an end to suffering planned. So right from beginning to end, you can talk about this issue of suffering and evil. “How can a good God allow evil?” is the other question.
Phillip: When it comes to apologetics, when you debate publicly about Genesis, it is the kind of scientific question and the literary question, isn’t it? “Do you read it literally or not?” That is the kind of question people have, isn’t it?
Peter: Yes. And that is to say, if you are not Christian and you’re an opponent of Christianity, you say, of course you read it literally, because if you do, it makes no sense. It’s nonsense. One of the responses to that is to say, well, you mustn’t read it literally. I hesitate with that one because I think literal reading is immensely important.
Phillip: People ask questions of Genesis and ask questions of those of us who believe in the Genesis account. But are all questions good questions?
Peter: I respect people who ask questions generally unless they’re being rude. But in a sense, the questions are fair questions and good questions but often are based on misunderstandings. I draw a distinction between literal and literalistic. A literal reading I see as being a reading as intended by the author, a literalistic reading doesn’t take into account the way in which literature works. A literalistic reading of a parable, for example, would assume that such an event actually occurred. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it did occur, rather that it’s making a point. A literal reading of a parable needs to recognize it as a parable.
Phillip: Well, that will be a topic we need to deal with. But I want to come back to questions because I’ve been asked lots of questions over the years. I like what you’re saying that you’ve got to respect the person who is asking the question because that is where their mind is at. That’s what they’re thinking. People ask questions for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they’re not asking a question to find an answer. They’re using the question form to make an argument.
Why people are asking the question is part of how we deal with questions.
Peter: To ask a question in reply is not a bad technique. Tell me, why are you asking this question, where has it come from? That approach often opens a door or opens a gate for the flood to come through.
Phillip: Especially on the problem of suffering because I’ve noticed over the years, that when people in public ask me a question about suffering, I’ve learnt never to answer. I always reflect back the suffering they’re talking about. Just saying, “Oh, yes, it is really hard when children go through these things”. They then come back with a second and third question, They say, “My little brother…”.
Phillip: There are other questions that are not good because they’re misleading. The essence of research is to find the right question rather than the right answers. If you get the right question, the answer tumbles out. So if I’m asking what’s the colour of the equator, well, I might genuinely want to know. I might be asking in order to find out not just have an argument. But as long as I ask the question, I’m never going to get a satisfactory answer.
Phillip: And then similarly, it’s caught up with your idea about forms of literature. For those old listeners amongst us, looking up the road directory to find a phone number doesn’t work any more than looking up a phone directory to find a road. You’re asking the wrong question of the wrong literature, aren’t you?
Then there are categories that you talk of and think of, like science. What is science?
I mean, the word used to mean just knowledge, wasn’t it? We’ve made theology the queen of sciences, which sounds very strange today. But what is the heart of scientific questioning or thinking? And how does that relate to Genesis? So how do you understand science? Because we’re bound to use that language, aren’t we?
Peter: Yes, and it used to be called natural science as opposed to theological science and so forth, the study of the created order. The study of the created order in all its parts and all its complications and not just of course the world in which we’re living but the whole universe and so forth. It’s a method to ask questions. It’s method is to put forward hypotheses if you like, but it also involves experiment and it involves the willingness to recognize that our original assumptions, our original conclusions even, are open to question. The wonderful thing about science is that there’s always the possibility that fresh information may emerge, better experiments may occur, and the science will change. So in our time, for example, the Big Bang Theory emerged somewhere in the 50s or 60s I think of last century, and that changed the way that hitherto people have been thinking scientifically about the origins of things. Now integral to science then is the willingness to say it’s a discipline which involves research, experiment, observation, and always the possibility of more information coming in. It is a truly remarkable development in human thinking and one for which of course we benefit all the time.
Phillip: Well, you use the words ‘wonderful’, ‘remarkable’ and ‘benefit’. But so often I find people want to put science against Christianity. And therefore, when asking me questions they assume I wouldn’t appreciate science or like science. That I’m anti-science and that comes in the background of Genesis discussions.
Peter: Well, I’m very much in favour of medicine, for example, particularly at my age, and tablets and all sorts of other good things. Science has transformed our world or helped to transform our world. But there’s another element to this, namely that human beings are irredeemably corrupt, and we take even the best of things and pervert them. It is said there’s something of a crisis in the scientific community about the number of articles and so forth that are put forward that are actually not true and can’t be trusted. Even though they’re peer-reviewed. What can you trust in the literature? This is very funny because, in other words, science proceeds by faith. We trust each other for what we’re saying. From the very beginning, one of the great scientists in the 17th century was the great chemist Boyle.
It was he who really insisted that scientific experiments and results be broadcast, not kept secret, so that science could grow, so that you could publish your results and have the people in Germany and other parts of Europe follow it up. He was Christian. It was a Christian observation. It’s not science per se, but it’s ethics, it’s morality, which has come from a Christian heart.
One of the reasons why our modern scientific world arose was because of the Protestant Reformation and the reintroduction of the Bible and the publication of the Bible, which of course brings us back to Genesis 1. If you wish to trace the history of science, you’ll see this in the better books at least. There’s a book written by a wonderful Jewish rabbi, now deceased, Jonathan Sacks, in which he talks about the partnership of religion and science. In the 19th century, there was a famous book or an infamous book written about the enmity of religion and science, and that has had a big impact as though that is the truth. But if you look at the history of science and the way in which science is done to this day, I believe the partnership of science and religion is the reality.
Phillip: Well, we’ll come to more of that too. Part of the reason for choosing Genesis 1-11 is it does raise up so many issues.
Peter: It’s really good because it challenges the scientific findings, challenges our readings and makes us go back and look again to see if we’re understanding the text properly. I think that’s a good thing.
Phillip: It’s always a good thing to have your ideas challenged. One of the problems of modern society and modern computer society is that we are living in thought bubbles. All we’re doing is getting information confirmed to us.
What are the limitations of scientific inquiry? “Science proves” is always a subject which disturbs me because science always has the openness to change but it talks about the overwhelming weight of scientific publications. It’s not a democracy, is it? It’s an openness to change, which makes science so powerful.
Peter: I remember reading a Christian theologian once who said science is atheistic and the scientist is an atheist. What he meant by that was not that it is atheistic as a discipline or that all scientists are atheists, not true. We know many scientists are but when the scientific work is being done, you can’t simply appeal to God as the reason why there is something you don’t understand. This used to be called “the God of the gaps” where God is the explanation for the bits you can’t understand. In a sense, as you go into the laboratory, you leave your Christian faith outside the door and you look at things in themselves. Now, that’s necessary and good but it’s never the whole story. You can’t leave your ethics outside the door. In fact, I would say that the idea that you can do this, look at things in their own terms, actually depends upon the unity, the oneness of God. We’re not living in a world with many gods, we’re living in a world with one God, with one will, a world in which this God is in charge of all things. And so it’s not that you’re an atheist in the laboratory, it is that your basic assumption is that there is one will behind all this and that it is consistent, that you can trust what you see as the product of this one will, that God is in everything. So, for the purposes of your work, you can be in a sense, now I’m speaking poetically really, an atheist.
Phillip: One of the ways of dealing with Genesis, as you said earlier, is to take it as literalistic. But there are many of these options out there that people have.
Peter: I remember coming across this in the 1980s. When I was talking to someone, she used this phrase “the reader is the author.” In other words, you are in charge of what you are reading and it is your assessment of what you’re reading which is the truth, not what the author has been trying to communicate. The reader is the author is what I took it to be. Now go along with what you mentioned about approaching literature in a sense as an enemy, looking for its power over you. In the end any book, any great literature, is going to be deconstructed, is going to not speak with the power and authority which it deserved and which it has achieved over the years.
At least some modern people, particularly literature people, have come back and begun to see the power of Genesis. It’s not anti-scientific. It’s in partnership with science. The teaching of Genesis helps lead to science.
Phillip: But the reading categories that people want to squeeze are their attempts to control the literature. The reader is the author. I sit in judgment over it rather than letting it sit in judgment over me. It’s the arrogance of the enlightenment pushed into post-enlightenment thinking, rather than the humility of the reader. I’ve always wondered why they don’t apply the same criteria to themselves? Why write a book saying that the author does not know what he’s talking about but is actually trying to manipulate you and expect people to not feel manipulated by you.
Before we get to literature we have oral transmission. We have people talking to each other in the modern world as in the ancient world and when you speak to someone else and you ask them about themselves or ask them some question or other you actually expect them a to speak the truth, as far as they can see it, and to think that they’re communicating with you and you are not reading them in the way you want to read them. It’s immensely important to be a good listener as a forerunner to being a good reader. I always think our duty towards the author is to love the author, in other words the law of love. We are to love them as we love ourselves. We are to listen even if you’re reading Mein Kampf or something like that, you’ve got to actually listen to what the author is saying. You may then totally disagree with it and regard it as nonsense or whatever. But the skill in reading is the same skill, I think, in listening to people. That is one of the great joys of life to listen to people, to what they are actually saying.
Peter: If you do not trust anybody you don’t have any friends. One of the funniest things with the now ancient atheistic movement was this attack on faith because you cannot be a human being without constantly exercising faith
Phillip: I think we need to get rid of the word faith because it is so coloured by that discussion. It could be and that’s why trust is a better word, it means the same thing.
Peter: Well, I wouldn’t mind redeeming the word faith, but yes, it is the same thing. And of course, at every moment of every day, we are trusting others and we’re trusting the consistency of the world around us. Otherwise, we couldn’t exist as human beings.
Phillip: We have to trust ourselves so that I can understand what I’m reading. What I’ve discovered is true. Trusting my own mental abilities. Trust is just part of life.
Peter: Of course, it only works when it’s connected to truth. That is to say, if you trust in falsehoods, if you trust in that which is not true. Now, if the atheist says to us, oh, you only have faith, we have science or something like this, I smile. But the real question is, is the trust I have in the truth? So if it’s not the trust, it’s the thing in which you have your trust that matters. That is the issue.
Phillip: The questions that people ask me about Genesis 1-11 shield them from hearing the questions that Genesis 1-11 asks them. It’s the arrogance of control of the literature. In the coming weeks we will see that Genesis 1-11 gives us the answers to the questions and asks us questions: Who do you think God is? What do you mean by the word God? What is your life without God? If God didn’t create the world are we just meaningless accidents? Did nothing create us? Is nothingness the ultimate reality? Who are we? What are we without creation? It raises big questions of meaning and purpose. When you ask about meaning and purpose, then flowing out of that, morality or amorality or immorality and why are we conscious of eternity unlike the animals, if there is no eternity? Where is the world going? Is there a purpose and meaning and direction to the world or is it accidental? Is it just random meanings? Is history a reality? Not all philosophies of the world are interested in history. What happened in the past? What’s happening now? Where is the future going?
They are questions that come out of Genesis and ask us to deal with them. Genesis prepares us for the New Testament. Without Genesis I would argue that it’s hard to understand what Jesus dying of the cross is about because you haven’t understood God or the concepts that Genesis brings to us. So, although I don’t want to have a complete separation of science and religion or science and Genesis, science is not going to answer those questions. It can’t answer those questions because they’re beyond scientific knowledge
I saw Richard Dawkins being challenged the other day about morality because from his framework he is committed to determinism. But he was being asked, if everything is determined, including your thinking, why is it that we punish criminals for their behaviour or their actions? And he said, well, I have no answer to that. What? Because well, he can’t have an answer to it. At least that’s to weaken his determinism, his materialistic naturalistic determinism. But he didn’t, he held his ground. But the more he held his ground, the more you realized there are very serious limitations to what that ground can answer.
Phillip: And Genesis is asking the other questions of us. That’s why I want to ask you about right questions, and wrong questions, because Genesis is going to ask us questions, whereas we think we can ask questions of it, not so much to find out the answer, but to disagree with it, to rule over it, to judge it. You told me the other day about our deceased elderly brother. He read to you Genesis 1. He asked you about Genesis 1, didn’t he? Because I want to say, before we finish, we should read something from the Bible. And it says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Why was that verse important for him to tell you about?
Peter: I can well remember he was six years older than me and a lot smarter of course. He said to me once, the four most important words in the Bible are the most important words: “In the beginning God.” It is the idea that there is one God, that we’re dealing with an absolutely consistent universe which is the product of the thinking of the one God, not many gods, for example. That verse has always stuck with me. It was immensely important that he said that to me. I have never forgotten it, and I do think that those opening words sort you out.
Phillip: Well, next week we’ll come back to more sorting out, then.
