CHAPTER 3

CREATION: THE BURIED TRUTH OF MAN AND NATURE

We’ve already observed that the event of biblical creation clearly defines the Creator-creature distinction against the pagan Continuity of Being belief. It also opposes paganism with another distinction: the man-nature distinction. As parts of the created universe, man and nature both are sharply distinguished from the Creator, but they are also distinguished from each other. The picture looks like this:

CREATOR
_____________
Man
________
Nature

In this chapter I concentrate on the man-nature distinction. This distinction is crucial for everything that follows early Genesis in the Bible. So important is this distinction to God’s plan that paganism suppresses it like it does the Creator- creature distinction. In the fleshly mind, these spiritually vital distinctions have been buried underneath the Continuity of Being doctrine. According to that old pagan doctrine, God, man, and nature differ only in degree, not in kind.

WHAT IS MAN?

Let’s begin with man first. The Bible and pagan culture radically disagree on what man is. To see just how radical the disagreement is, I will begin with a look at the biblical narratives of man’s creation. Then I will show how man’s design utterly sets him apart from all the universe. Finally, I will introduce the concept of “divine institutions”--the fundamental features of human social existence according to God’s Word.

God’s Description of Man’s Creation. The “close-up” picture of man’s creation is given in Genesis 2:7,15-25. God says He miraculously formed man from the earth. The term “dust” in this context is sometimes interpreted by those following an accommodationist strategy as metaphorical for man’s upward development from primates. They think by so doing they can accommodate the Genesis narrative to the evolutionary worldview. Unfortunately for this approach, the term “dust” in this context is used for literal earth particles of bodily decay after death (Gen. 3:19). Clearly, at death man does not revert back to his supposedly previous primate existence! The narrative, therefore, speaks of a literal, instantaneous creation of man.

If the narrative’s literal meaning weren’t clear enough from 2:7, it certainly is from 2:21-22. Unlike any other species, the human female is derived from the one original body. This is not an incidental detail; it relates to the entire plan of salvation as I note later. There is simply no room in this narrative for evolution of man from primate. This literal interpretation of Genesis 2 is given in the New Testament (I Cor. 11:6-9; I Tim. 2:13-14).

Also note that man is assigned to a task that involves labor and moral responsibility (2:15-17). Such a task requires social intercourse with other human beings (2:18). Accomplishment of the task involves study of nature and linguistic description (2:19-20).

The other narrative of man’s creation (Gen. 1:26-30) reports that mankind as male and female is made in God’s image. In the ancient world kings would set up images of themselves down among the people for them to worship (see Dan. 3). The images were their glory. Here God sets up an image of himself down at the creature level of existence, not to be worshipped, but to be respected for His glory (Jas. 3:9). This image of God is to rule God’s earth by subduing it and filling it by procreation.

God put into these narratives observational data that have immense significance. We are uniquely designed for a glorious role in the history of the universe. Let’s look at some key features in man’s design.

The Unique Design of Mankind. Man’s design is fundamentally related to God’s plan for the universe. Want a biblically correct “self-image”? Lay hold of these four truths that define the man-nature distinction!

1. Of central importance is the truth that man is an image of God in both body and spirit. This truth is the foundation for all revelation, including the Incarnation of God the Son. Yet it suffers from two opposite distortions. On one hand, there is the distortion of Mormonism which holds to the belief that “as man is God once was, and as God is man one day shall be.” Holding to the traditional pagan notion of the Continuity of Being, Mormonism erases the Creator-creature distinction. God the Father, in Mormonism, is not only the archetype of our body but He actually has a physical body Himself (and procreated children with His wives!).

On the other hand, to avoid idolatry Christians usually restrict the “image” to the invisible, immaterial part of man, leaving it utterly unrelated to the form of the body. As John Pilkey writes: “No one disputes that the ‘image of God’ refers to conscience and reason; but the view that this image has nothing to do with the body is profoundly erroneous. . . .because it implies that God, in the Creation, failed to harmonize the form of the body with these faculties. The enemies of Christianity can sense the futility of this theological flaw and have exploited it with profound effect. If the form of the human body derives from any other source except divine faculties, then we might as well say that human form derives from purely casual causes, unrelated to the ideal mind of God. Darwinism is the logical result, namely, that God caused the animal and human forms to occur. . .without regard to any dimension of His own essence.”[1]

This is not just a neat philosophical point. It has directly to do with the Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. When God the Son came into the world, He spoke of the human body to the Father, “A body thou hast prepared for me” (Heb. 10:5). The ancient Church father Tertullian pictured God at creation bending over His clay as He made man: “Imagine God wholly employed and absorbed in it--with his hand, his eye, his labor, his purpose, his wisdom, his providence, and above all, his love which was dictating the lineaments of this creature. . . . Whatever was the form and expression which was then given to the clay by the Creator, Christ was in his thoughts as one day to become Man, because the Word, too, was to be both clay and flesh. . . .”[2] Thus through a human body God could “fully” be contained (Col. 2:9) and seen (John 14:9). Through a human body, the Son rules forever (Heb. 1:3). Thus in his body and spirit man is a theomorphism, utterly unlike any other creature.

2. Through his body, man rules nature. Unlike bodiless angels, man’s spirit directly rules nature beginning with that part of the earth that makes up his own flesh. Thereupon, he can reach out with his brain, mouth, and hands to name nature and subdue it. No one has put this point more succinctly than the Medieval theologian Hugo St. Victor: “The spirit was created for God’s sake, the body for the spirit’s sake, and the world for the body’s sake; so that the spirit might be subject to God, the body to the spirit, and the world to the body.”[3]

Man’s dominion rule is fulfilled by God only through the Incarnation in Christ (I Cor. 15:24-28; Heb. 2:5-9). At that future day, man’s dominion rule will extend over even the angels (I Cor. 6:2-3; Heb. 2:5)! All of nature awaits this glorious moment (Rom. 8:19-22).

Before then, however, every man must be spiritually perfected through the exercise of ruling, starting with his own flesh and working outward. Even the sinless Son of God had to be perfected in this manner of exercising human dominion (Heb. 2:10; 5:7-9). In the next section I will use this point in discussing a biblical view of scientific knowledge, and in later Parts of this framework I will show how it undergirds our spiritual growth (sanctification). His dominion role separates man from nature.

3. All humans are made from Adam’s single body. Unlike angels, each of whom are individual creations, and unlike animals which were created in male-female pairs, mankind is made from one body. In an absolutely unique way, the woman was taken out of the man. Thus the genetic composition of the human race originated in that body of clay in Eden.

Why the special treatment for man? Because man is central to God’s plan of showing forth His glory. God will one day need to save men from their sins. The entire race must be designed to be “redeemable” so that one Savior can somehow die for the many (Rom. 5:12-19; I Cor 15:21-22). The woman must derive from the man if the man is to be the central head of the original human race in sin and salvation. Such racial solidarity marks off mankind from all animals, angels, and pagan concepts of what man is.

4. Man through his spirit chooses, judges, loves, and knows. The creation narratives report that the first man was faced with the moral choice of obedience or disobedience as well as the task of knowing and naming. Far from some grunting primate, the first man was fully capable of rapid learning (Gen. 2:19), conversing with God (Gen. 2:16-17), and singing a love song (Gen. 2:23). These reports have stunning implications!

Choice, conscience, love, and knowing reveal the presence of the human spirit. Man’s spirit as part of the image of God is what enables him to be a responsible, conscious knower (Prov. 1:23; I Cor. 2:11). It provides man with these finite versions of God’s “communicable” (Q)ualities of sovereignty, holiness, love, and omniscience. Interestingly no one doubts these qualities exist yet they cannot be measured, touched, tasted, or seen--precisely the very same features unbelievers claim make them doubt God’s existence!

a. Choice. Because man is created with his own spirit fashioned in God’s image, he can never escape the Presence of God in the depths of his heart. He has to submit to Him with a heart of faith and the presupposition of the Word of God, or he has to rebel against Him with a heart of unbelief and the presupposition of autonomy. Here is why man, unlike animals, is held ultimately responsible for his eternal destiny. As the “lord” of nature, man alone has the (q)uality of choice that corresponds but is not identical to the (Q)uality of God’s sovereignty.

Regardless of which response he makes, however, his thoughts and speech will always betray his chosen presuppositions. As manifestations of his spirit, man’s thoughts and words reveal its basic orientation toward God. This is why God judges us by our words (Matt. 12:34-37).

b. Conscience. Although man knows that he himself fails, he can never restrain himself from making real moral judgments (“that is wrong”, “you ought to. . .”). These judgments are not intended merely as opinions or likes and dislikes; they intend to appeal to some transcendent moral authority. Where is the authority for such judgments? It cannot come from experience with nature because whatever is the state-of-affairs, isn’t necessarily what is right. “Rightness” is not an arithmetic mean.[4] Moral authority cannot come from other people or from society. History shows that entire societies are judged as wrong. Only two sources of moral authority for such judgments are available: the self or God. Whichever is chosen, everyday moral judgments reveal the chosen authority of man’s spirit.

Moral judgments show the human (q)uality of conscience as derivative of God’s (Q)uality of holiness. Being relative to one’s spiritual growth and experience of revelation (I Cor. 8:7; Heb. 5:14), man’s moral judgments are not always correct in content, but they show inherent awareness of the moral authority of the absolute Person.

c. Love. Another evidence of the human spirit made uniquely in God’s image is love. Love requires the existence of another human spirit for it can never be truly exercised apart from a personal relationship. It is not good that anyone be alone, even Adam in Eden (Gen. 2:18). All men acknowledge directly and indirectly throughout their entire life their need to be loved. Simultaneously, all men thrive when they love one another with significant giving of their self. Real love is not limited just to the parent-child or man-wife relationship. Love is the deepest and only authentic motive behind ethics.

Yet the (q)uality of human love can never be identical to the (Q)uality of God’s love. God’s love depends upon nothing in the universe for it pre-existed creation within His triune nature. Human love, by contrast, remains fragile, always dependent upon creature existence. To exist human love requires an environment in which man’s existence is unthreatened so that it is “safe” to give. This environment cannot be supplied by the pagan worldview because it has no Infinite Personal Creator Who loves with sovereignty and omnipotence. Paganism can only produce fear and self-protective schemes. Real human love, in other words, presupposes biblical creation and sets man off from nature.

d. Knowledge. Perhaps the most studied characteristic of man is his capacity to reason, to think conceptually, and to speak his thoughts in language. While pagan thinkers today try very hard to explain human knowledge on the basis of evolutionary development from animals, the Bible clearly draws a line between man and the animals in this regard (e.g., note use of aloga meaning “unreasoning” in II Pet. 2:12). The (q)uality of knowledge emanates from man’s spirit and is a finite form of the (Q)uality of Omniscience.

Man’s other spiritual features of choice, conscience, and love presuppose knowledge for they could not be exercised without it (Lk. 1:1-4; Jn. 20:31; Eph. 1:17ff). Yet it is also true that correct choices, obedience to conscience, and exercise of authentic love open up knowledge (Jn. 7:17; Eph. 3:17-19). All men take for granted that conscience controls the knowing process whenever they moralize that one is “obligated” to accept the truth once it is known.

Human knowledge is similar but not identical to omniscience. Human knowledge presupposes a standard of truth; omniscience is its own. Human knowledge presupposes universal truths (men use the terms “always”, “never”, etc., and express their philosophy of life as a totality); omniscience is universal truth. Human knowledge derives from sensory perception and reasoning; omniscience is independent of both. Human knowledge can imagine things to create by various tools (language, machines, etc.); omniscience can create directly. Finally, human knowledge is, in the final analysis, “circular”; it always depends upon presuppositions that control its reasoning.

Central to human knowledge is language. Yet human language is quite limited as anyone knows who has struggled to express an “impression” or “intuition”. Over the past century or so, studies have exposed further limitations in human language and the thought behind it. Evidences consist of semantic and logical paradoxes, problems with infinity in mathematics, and multiple geometries each of which isvlogically consistent but which contradicts the others.[5] Various philosophers and poets in this century have sought to “get beyond” language in ways very similar to anti-rational mysticisms of ancient pagan religions.[6]

As with all the other features of man’s spirit, however, language exists at two levels--the level of God and the level of man. Man’s language requires for its justification a higher, perfectly rational language or in modern terms, an ultimate “metalanguage”, for its validity. Of course, the Bible provides exactly that in the Second Person of the Trinity as the Word of God Who created, upholds, and constantly directs the universe (Jn. 1:1-4; Col. 1:16-17; Heb. 1:2-3; 11:1-3). Since within physical creation only man possesses language and the knowledge expressed in it, the man-nature distinction is shown again.

In both body and spirit, therefore, man is uniquely designed in the image of God and set apart from the rest of the universe. Such a special creature needs special social structures to which I now turn.

The Divine Institutions. The term “divine institution” has been used by Christians to speak of those absolute social structures instituted by God for the entire human race--believers and unbelievers alike. Though modern paganism views them as by- products of man’s psycho-social evolution, the Bible insists God Himself installed at least three of them at creation.

1. The first divine institution is responsible dominion (Gen. 1:26-30; 2:15-17; Psa. 8:3-8). Although the earth and its produce is the Lord’s (Psa. 24:1), mankind was assigned to manage it under God’s authority. Man was placed as a derivative “lord”. Later, at the fall (see next chapter), this dominion would become perverted but not taken away.

Here is the biblical doctrine of creative labor. The first picture of God in the Bible is as a laborer. He expresses His character in His work (“glorifying Himself”) and, as He finishes each part, He evaluates and enjoys it. In similar fashion God assigned labor to Adam. God let Adam investigate and create names for natural objects (Gen. 2:19). In so doing Adam was evaluating (imputing value to) the objects (Gen. 2:20).

Of course, Adam’s dominion labor wasn’t identical to God’s. When he named an object, he wasn’t creating ex-nihilo; he was merely discovering something of God’s prior creative labor and evaluation (Gen. 2:18). Gary North points out the economic implications of this point: “The problem of value is central to the science of economics. Is value determined objectively or subjectively? Is the value of some scarce economic resource inherent in that resource, or is it derived from the evaluations of acting men? In short, is value intrinsic or imputed? . . . How can we reconcile the fact that something objectively good, like the Bible, is worth less in a particular market than pornographic literature? . . . The Bible affirms man’s ability to impute value, for man is made in the image of God, and God imputes value to His creation. . . .Men cannot make absolute, comprehensive value imputations, since men are creatures. But they can make value imputations as limited creatures which are valid in God’s eyes, and before the rebellion of man in the garden, this is what man did.[7]

For some today, it is a radical message that labor was instituted before the fall! Labor, whether manual or intellectual, expresses the spiritual character of the soul. It beckons evaluation.

2. The second divine institution, marriage, is defined in terms of the first. The woman was brought to Adam specifically as a “helper”. Why did he need help? Because of his calling before God to rule nature. Unlike animals, mankind’s so-called sexual differentiation is not merely for procreation; it is also for dominion. The “one flesh” relationship, while truly romantic and sexual, occurs inside the larger context of the first divine institution. Later in this series I point out how marriage under the Mosaic Law included very unromantic, business-like, economic arrangements in order to protect its dominion function. That marriage is the chief means of dominion is seen in the New Testament. The man-woman distinction typifies the Christ- Church distinction (Eph. 5:22-33; Rev. 19:7-8) in which the Church completes Christ in His calling.

Mankind cannot express God’s image except as both “male and female” together (Gen. 1:27). This is because God has certain characteristics that are “feminine” in nature (e.g., Matt. 23:37). Moreover, the woman’s role as “helper” in Genesis 2:18 is not meant to be a demeaning, secondary one. The term used for “helper” elsewhere is used of God Himself (Exod. 18:4; Deut. 33:7). (Contrary to contemporary propaganda that the Bible is “patriarchal”, it reveals the equal value of the woman as no other document in the ancient Near East.)

Undeniably, however, the Bible places emphasis upon the man as the one who receives his calling from God which then shapes his choice of wife. She is not only his needful helper; she is his “glory” (I Cor. 11:7-9). The man defines himself in terms of God and of his wife. Together in a division of labor man and wife separate from their own families to build a new one (Gen. 2:24). Only in a nuclear family, in contrast to an extended family, does a young man have to face full leadership responsibility directly under God.

Opposed to this biblical picture are the usual media male role models of the comical stumbling father-fool or the adventurous, unmarried gun-slinger, both of which emphasize male irresponsibility and immaturity.

3. The third divine institution is built upon the first and second. Marriage normally leads to dominion through a family. In the Bible it is the family, not the individual, that is the basic unit of society (property, for example, is titled under Mosaic Law to families). When God sent His Son, He sent Him not to a church, not to a state, not to an isolated existence; He sent Him into a family.

Note in Genesis 1:28 that mankind was to populate the world, but it was to be done in conjunction with ruling it. In other words, population growth rate should be related to successful rulership. Family and marriage cannot be separated from dominion. Where dominion is perverted and the environment ruined, starvation and poverty follow. Where marriage is dishonored and where families are broken, society collapses. No amount of laws, programs, or “redefinitions” of marriage and family can save the day. To provide for dominion and prosperity God designed divine institutions, and no other social arrangements will produce them.

The family is the human’s first school, first church, and first state. As I point out in the next section, man as God’s image-bearer has to consciously learn most of his behavior in contrast to animals that possess extensive instinct. The family is the training ground. There man first learns of authority, love, and responsibility. In response to his parents, he discovers humility under authority--either voluntary or enforced (!). To support this family function, the Mosaic Law eliminated children who learned neither (Deut. 21:18-21). A successful society requires successful families.

This third divine institution, like the first two, also carries over into the spiritual realm. God reveals Himself in family terms--Father and Son. Because man is a theomorphism everything about him and his social existence reveals God’s character to him. Precisely because of this fact, the fleshly mind of paganism unceasingly seeks to bury the evidence. Paganism seeks to deny ultimate responsibility and replace it with the concept of victimization. It seeks to deny marriage and replace it with juvenile individualism. It seeks to deny family structure and replace it with every other arrangement imaginable. Yet this entire rebellious program finally self-destructs because God is not mocked: disease, poverty, crime, and death are the unavoidable results.

Exercise 3.1.

1. Read Job 38:1-3; 40:1-8; 42:1-6 and answer these questions: How does God characterize human knowledge? Would Job have stopped thinking the way he did if God had not initiated the conversation? What is shown here about man’s moral judging capacity? How does Job finally respond to God?

2. Read Proverbs 1:23. The phrase “pour out my spirit” is often interpreted as referring to some non- verbal, emotional outburst. Yet in this verse “spirit” and “word” are paralleled. Adding insight from I Cor. 2:11, what does the Bible tell us about the human spirit and the phenomena of language, thought, and knowledge?

3. Using similarity relationships between the (Q)ualities of the Triune Creator and the (q)ualities of man, defend the following two propositions: (1) “only Christianity provides a basis for genuine human love”; and (2) “only Christianity provides a basis for genuine human knowledge.”

WHAT IS NATURE?

I have shown the human side of the man-nature distinction; now I turn to the nature side. By “nature” I include all of creation that is not man--rocks, water, plants, animals, angels, and stars. The first lesson taught to the first man was that nothing in nature fits his need for a personal relationship (Gen. 2:18-20). In his present mortal state man is temporarily lower than the angels and is confined in some way to the local part of nature which we now call planet earth (Psa. 8:3-8). It is with this local part of nature that I will devote most of our attention.

I will begin with a look at the overall design of nature in distinction from the design of man. Then I will deal with man’s relationship with nature through the exercise of his dominion. I will show you four very significant universal limitations on this dominion that doom all carnal dreams of rebellion against God.

Design of Nature. Old writers of centuries ago used to refer to nature as “dumb” and “brute” to distinguish its essential character from that of man. These writers did not use the word “dumb” like we do today, as a synonym for “stupid”. “Dumb” used to refer to the inability to speak thoughts through language, i.e., speechlessness. “Brute” meant without ability to know. These writers, we shall see, were nearer to the truth than they knew.

Whereas Adam could not find a speech-laden, personal relationship with any part of nature, he could and did receive revelation about God from nature. Natural (or general) revelation is spoken of everywhere in the Bible (e.g., Job 38-41; Psa. 19:1-6; Acts 14:17; Rom. 1:18-20). The creation is said to “glorify” its Creator. But if nature doesn’t personally speak to us, if it is “dumb”, then how can we learn about God from it? How, without language, can information be transferred from nature to our minds? How does nature “glorify” God?

Nature contains patterns and forms that we recognize as products of a thinking, speaking, spirit-mind, similar to our own. It is precisely the meaning of these patterns and forms that modern paganism (in its evolutionary form) denies by ascribing them to chance. Pilkey notes: “The whole point of the Creationist-Darwinian debate is whether the leonine form, for example, originated as a perfect idea in the mind of God or as a casual exercise in feline development. . . .The evolutionary philosophy begins to lose its appeal the instant that a mind begins to suspect that certain visible forms have eternal value.[8] The form and behavior of a lamb, for example, instead of being the accidental outcome of chance-driven mutations and natural selection, was purposefully designed to communicate redemptive knowledge to man (note its appearance on the Throne of God in Rev. 5).

Nature, while not originating its own thoughts in speech to us as another person would, is loaded with information from God’s thoughts. You can see and recognize this information not only in heavenly patterns (Psa. 19:1-6) and in large-scale animal forms (Job 38-41), but in what has been recently learned about the biological cell and its genetic codes. Note here that I am claiming not merely that forms exist, but that we also recognize that the forms carry a message.

To show the difference between merely saying a pattern is observed and saying the pattern carries meaningful information to our minds, I adapt an illustration from A. E. Wilder-Smith. Imagine looking at a series of apparently random dots and dashes arranged in a sequence. As your eye looks along the sequence, you notice a pattern (. . . _ _ _ . . .). If you are knowledgeable of Morse Code, you immediately see the pattern as containing a message, “S.O.S.”, the international sign for help. If you are not knowledgeable of the Morse Code “language”, you merely notice an interesting pattern but do not see any message in it. To “get the message” or for the pattern to be meaningful, you and the originator of the pattern must share a common language.[9]

In much the same way nature is filled with forms and patterns noticed by all men everywhere. The Bible insists that such patterns actually are carrying meaningful messages about the Creator. They contain information about His character, that He plans and purposes. They “glorify Him” and “show His handiwork”. We “get the message” because the patterns resemble objects we make and think about with our personal spirits acting through our bodies. Our spirits recognize the Presence of Another Spirit Who thinks information-filled thoughts.

Notice I said, natural patterns “resemble” patterns of man- made objects, not that they are identical. Unbelievers often try to oppose the so-called teleological argument for God (argument from design) by citing instances of chaos or apparently useless features. But the Bible doesn’t teach that every part of nature can be “read” correctly. Much of nature has been irreversibly damaged by the fall (see Chapter Four). Even some of the parts that weren’t ruined by the fall in original Eden, had to be explained directly to Adam using spoken words (Gen 1:28-30; 2:16- 17). So nature doesn’t always carry a clearly understandable message, but it does carry significant amounts of information about its Maker from His Spirit to our spirits.[10]

Just because the design of nature does glorify God, the carnal mind must somehow falsify it. The information that natural designs convey about their Creator must be shut off. The easiest way to bury this information can be inferred from Wilder- Smith’s Morse Code illustration above. By denying (or suppressing or forgetting) the Morse Code language rules, the “S- O-S” pattern loses all meaning. In like fashion, by suppressing the human spirit’s sense of eternity (Eccl. 3:11) and the personal God of eternity, paganism shuts off reception of the information coming to it from nature (Rom. 1:21).

However, paganism can never leave matters alone. The suppressed yearning of the human spirit for God can’t stand total meaninglessness. Thus it redirects itself and fabricates meaning for all the natural design it observes (Rom. 1:22). It exchanges the information about God attached to natural design for pseudo- information that man’s mind makes up and imposes on the forms and patterns (Rom. 1:23).

The design of nature, therefore, is a two-edged sword. On one hand, it is general revelation to all men everywhere of the character of God as Creator and Sustainer. On the other hand, its brightness causes the rebellious to shut their eyes and drives them to idolatry. Man’s response to nature’s design shapes the quality of his dominion to which I now turn.

Man’s Limited Power over Nature. Adam’s dominion over nature was limited to that part of nature nearby, the earth. Someday his dominion would extend over all nature into the very heavens through Christ, but not yet. Not only was Adam limited as to space, but also as to time. Adam was created mortal, that is, subject to possible death. Compared to the future resurrec- tion body, his original body was mortally vulnerable; he could self-destruct. Here is the physical aspect of man’s limited dominion. Although this physical limit does have an absolute outer boundary (neither Adam nor his progeny could auto-resurrect or ascend to heaven in their mortal bodies), man had plenty of room to expand his dominion. Starting with that part of material nature closest to him, his own fleshly body created from the earth (I Cor. 15:42-49), he could work outward over all the earth. The first divine institution, responsible dominion, is to produce workmanship and projects that God will one day judge the value of. Only if man remains in communication with the Designer of nature, will such dominion produce acceptable fruit.

This strange, provisionary status of mankind in mortal vulnerability is vitally linked to the plan of God. If Adam had not sinned he could have lived forever, never having to die. His body cells apparently were like today’s one-celled creatures such as the amoeba which, apart from an accidental interference, never have to die a natural death. They simply perpetuate their existence unendingly. Arthur Custance draws our attention to a fascinating implication: Adam and Eve had to be created with bodies capable of endless continuance and under no necessity of dying in order that the Redeemer of man’s body might Himself likewise be under no necessity of dying, while yet remaining truly representative of man as created.[11]

Dr. Custance’s point is that Christ’s death was not a premature death in a body that would have naturally died, but it was a substitutionary death in a body that did not have to die. Christ, in this regard, came into the world in a body like that of the original Adam, a body not subject to natural death. Of course, here is another reason why evolution cannot be reconciled with biblical faith because it insists that death is “natural”.

In God’s plan not only does a mortally-vulnerable body permit a substitutionary death, but it also allows two additional features of salvation. First, unlike a resurrection body, it permits genuine repentence to take place. Once the resurrection body is given the eternal status of the person is fixed (John 5:28-29). Second, the death of the mortal body rids the saved person of his fallen flesh (I Cor. 15:50-57).

Thus man’s dominion is bounded physically by the Word of God. Now I turn to another limitation.

Man’s Limited Rights over Nature. Man’s dominion over nature is also limited morally. The Bible has a very powerful doctrine of ecology although pagan environmentalists regularly attack the Bible as a chief, if not the source of our present environmental problems. Clearly in Genesis 1:29-30; 2:15-17,19 God determines what Adam “ought” to do with nature. These are morally-based environmental regulations.

Later in the progress of revelation God gives more such regulations involving limits on working animals (Exod. 20:10; 23:12), on planting the soil (Exod. 23:10-11), on damaging fruit- bearing trees in war (Deut. 20:19), and on killing and capturing animals (Deut. 22:6-7). The moral order is that the Creator is ultimate owner of nature, not man; man is merely an underlord and steward.

Pagan critics of the Bible cannot rightly understand it because of their presuppositional belief in the Continuity of Being. Under this dogma, there is no personal Creator and Source of moral authority over nature. Thus Bible passages like Genesis 1:29-30 are misinterpreted inside the pagan grid as giving mankind autonomous lordship over nature instead of a derivative one. Then the Bible is blamed for justifying arrogant disregard for the environment. Of course, the irony in the pagan position is that it tries to make moral judgments about what “ought” to be done without ever justifying the source of such judgments!

Man’s Limited Knowledge of Nature. Besides the physical and moral limitations on man’s dominion over nature, there is the widely ignored mental limitation. Although man as a spiritual knower recognizes some of the information God’s Spirit put into the design of nature, man always must live with the Creator- creature distinction. God’s Spirit is incomprehensible, and His thoughts toward us and nature are incomprehensible. Man’s knowledge of nature, therefore, can never be complete because the ultimate wise plan behind every fact lies nowhere in man or nature itself; it lies with God. Job rightly wrote, “The deep says, ‘[Wisdom] is not in me’; and the sea says, ‘It is not with me.’”(Job 28:14). This mental limitation has two parts: reason and experience.

1. Reason. In my discussion of man’s knowledge as a finite version of God’s omniscience, I noted the limitations of man’s logic, language, and thought. Let’s look at one very important example. Every student of plane geometry remembers the “parallel line” axiom. It states that given a line l, and a point P not on that line, there is one and only one line m in the plane of l and P which passes through P and never meets l no matter how far out in space l and m are extended.

P m-- -- -- -- --x -- -- -- -- -- --

l _______________________________

Supposedly, all of geometry can be logically deduced given this axiom and nine other axioms. This so-called Euclidean geometry was thought to describe physical nature perfectly.

Something, however, in this parallel line axiom troubled mathematicians. Unlike the other nine axioms, it asserts a claim about what happens in far off space. Morris Kline explains: “What is objectionable about axioms which assert what happens far out in space? The answer is that they transcend experience. The axioms of Euclidean geometry are supposed to be immediately convincing statements about the properties of space. But how can one be sure of what happens millions of miles away?”[12] By the end of the nineteenth century mathematicians had devised new axioms that conflicted with each other. One claimed no parallel lines through P and another claimed more than one parallel line through P. With these new axioms, conflicting non- Euclidean geometries were created, having just as rigorous logical structure as the old Euclidean geometry.

The discovery of alternate, perfectly logical mathematical structures that radically conflict with each other exposed the limitations of human reason as a dominion tool. Kline notes the dispair that resulted: “The appearance of non-Euclidean geometries. . .led scientists to question whether man could ever hope to find a true scientific theory. . . .Even more devastating to philosophy was the realization that man can no longer be sure of his ability to acquire truths.”[13] Such despair, please note, is a paganistic over-reaction to the limitations on reason. Paganism insists on an all-or-nothing agenda. If the carnal mind can’t have God-like omniscience, it denies knowledge can exist at all. By way of contrast, the Bible-believing Christian rests in God’s omniscience as perfectly rational, not his finite version, and so does not plunge into this sort of despair.

2. Experience. The other part of man’s mental limitation is easier to appreciate. As the following diagram shows, regardless of how much man extends his direct observation through instruments and historical observations of the past, his still has limited experience. He can extend his data-collection into space with telescopes and into the microworld with microscopic techniques. He can study very small intervals of time with ultraspeed filming, and, to extend his observation of the past, he must rely on historical records of other men.

The problem is that no matter how many pieces of data and experiences man has (let us call the total “n”), he always faces the next unknown (the “n + 1”th datum). Experience is always local in time and space. In both experience and reason, therefore, man’s dominion over nature is mentally limited.

To exercise his dominion in a godly fashion, man must submit to the authority of God’s directly-spoken Word (special revelation = the Bible). God told Adam how He made the world, what He named in it, and what Adam was to do with it. Because of His plan for man to exercise dominion, we can rest assured that our reason and experience, though limited, is sufficient for the task. Sufficient, that is, if we worshipfully and obediently go about the task. We express our obedience when we proceed intellectually within the biblical framework allowing His interpretation to control our interpretation of nature. A Special Limitation in Constructing Histories of Nature. Today, of course, a major attack on biblical faith comes from evolutionary cosmology. While I address some details of this question in Appendices A, B, and C, here I provide you with a general criticism that applies to any pagan natural history.

How do you construct a history? Look at the diagram of man’s limited knowledge. Past events cannot be directly experienced. They can be known through direct observations of people who were there, or we can make conjectures (speculations) about the past. Note that conjectures are attempts at “universalizing” local experience.

For example, how can man really know which geometry fits nature one billion miles away (universalizing space-wise)? Or how can man really know that radioactive decay constants never change (universalizing time-wise)? There is no direct method of verification! To build natural histories, therefore, the pagan mentality has to set forth carefully-chosen universals or constants such as “c”, the speed of light. Unless something is constant there can be no knowledge or history whatsover (see Chapter 1). The setting forth, however, by definition cannot be on the basis of experience; it has to be by faith.

Now the Bible-believing dominion-man doesn’t have to root his knowledge in such hypothetical constants of nature. He locates his constants elsewhere, viz., in the Creator’s immutability and omniscience. For example, 5 minutes after God created Adam, how “old” would Adam have appeared to an observer ignorant of God’s observational narrative--20 years, 30 years? The “normal” physiological processes weren’t constant in this case. They were radically interrupted! But godly knowledge doesn’t come crashing down because a hypothetical constant ceased being a constant. Godly dominion locates its immutable foundation in the Creator rather than the creature.

The Bible-believing natural historian is in no hurry to universalize his local experience as the pagan is. When he attempts to reconstruct natural history, he remembers God’s question to Job (“where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”--Job 38:4) and is humbled.

Exercise 3.2

1. Re-read Genesis 2 on the creation of both Adam and Eve. Assuming 24 hour days, speculate on the time schedule of the sixth day--the time of creation of animals, of Adam, of the “experiment”, and of Eve. Imagine after each creation event, an outside observer is allowed to film for 1 minute. What would be his “interpretation” of the age of the objects in his film? Of the time duration separating each film segment? Why?

2. The creation story says God created animals and plants to reproduce “after their kinds”. Are there, on the basis of this text, “constants” that define categories of natural objects? How does the New Testament utilize these categories to teach further truth (see I Cor. 15:35ff)?

3. Develop a personal policy of your own toward living in God’s world. What general features should characterize the outworking of dominion over nature in your life? What do you “read” in nature about God’s character (for help use Jesus’ model in His Sermon on the Mount)? What things in nature prompt you to talk to God?

END NOTES FOR CHAPTER 3

1. John Pilkey, Origin of the Nations (San Diego, CA: Master Book Publishers, 1984), p. 257.

2. Quoted in Arthur C. Custance, Two Men Called Adam (Brockville, Ontario, Canada: Doorway Publications, 1983), p. 41.

3. Quoted in Ibid., p. 20.

4. It is a well-known philosophical fallacy that you cannot derive an “ought” statement from an “is” statement. Or as C.S. Lewis put it in his book, The Abolition of Man, you can’t get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of premises in the indicative mood. The fallacy still persists in the rationale behind how public surveys are often used to define “correctness”.

5. See any good text on the history of mathematics and logic.

6. See Francis Schaeffer’s works, especially his book Escape From Reason and How Then Shall We Live.

7. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (Tyler, Texas: Institute For Christian Economics, 1982), pp. 38, 59f.

8. Pilkey, p. 230.

9. A. E. Wilder-Smith, The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution (Costa Mesa, CA: The Word For Today Publishers, 1984), p. 57. Wilder-Smith has three earned doctorates in the physical sciences and has lectured in prominent universities in the United States, England, and Switzerland. He has some of the best criticisms of evolution from the viewpoint of thermodynamical statistics and information theory.

10. Keep in mind the Creator-creature distinction discussed in Chapter 2. Failure to honor this distinction has been at the heart of failure to properly phrase the teleological argument of God so that unbelievers cannot easily counter it. See John Frame’s comments in his Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1994), pp. 105-109.

11. Custance, p. 48f.

12. Morris Kline, Mathematics for the Nonmathematician (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1985), p. 454.

13. Kline, p. 475.