The Biblical Narrative Part 1 of 10
The first fully detailed journey-of-faith life-script in the Bible begins with Abraham…who lived around 2,100 or 2,200 B.C.
The biblical storylines of Enoch (Gen. 5:21-24) and Noah (Gen. 6:8-9:29)…coming before Abraham…are short in length…and do not have the amount of detail to be able to analyze the element of faith being lived-out in their life-scripts.
The fully developed life-script for Abraham the “father of faith” inaugurates the biblical narrative stories of faith…his life-story recorded in writing beginning in Genesis 12:1…Genesis being the first “book” in the Bible…composed sometime around 1,450 B.C. according to the dating given by conservative scholarship.
The biblical narrative worldview of experiential faith…in God…actualized into a real human life…therefore enters very early into the social and cultural sea of multiple competing options for human life…coming into existence in writing around 1,450 B.C. at the beginning of the Hebrew Bible…the Christian Old Testament…and completed in the first-century around 62-64 A.D. in the New Testament book of Acts…closing-out the biblical narrative stories of faith…ending with the life-script of Paul making contact and speaking with the local Jews upon arriving in Rome…awaiting his upcoming trial before the emperor Nero.
To put this timing into context in terms of an early introduction of the biblical narrative into the ancient marketplace of ideas…the invention of writing itself only goes back to as recent a time as 3,200 B.C. in the wedge-shaped cuneiform lettering of Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the cuneiform alphabet in Syria around 2,000 B.C., and in the 22-sign Phoenician alphabet dated around 1,000 B.C. The Greeks adopt the Phoenician writing script around 800 B.C.
Very early therefore in recorded human history, a worldly unconventional concept was introduced into the marketplace of ideas…that was revolutionary then and is still revolutionary today…coming into existence abruptly out of nowhere…without transitionally incremental small steps of development leading-up beforehand…to the God of the Bible displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9; 2 Tim. 1:9-10)…starting with the life-script of Abraham.
When Abraham receives his calling of God in the northern city of Haran…hearing God’s voice in the Spirit…and begins his journey south to Canaan the Land of Promise…with each step he takes…God is intentionally displacing…culturally and theologically…whatever “normal” life Abraham might otherwise have lived in Haran…as defined by ancient conventional thinking…instead bringing into existence the entirely new and innovative creation of a journey of faith following the leading of God…consisting of a new life-script that Abraham could not have dreamed-up in his wildest imagination…Abraham or any other ancient person at that time and place.
This displacement element…of the God of the Bible actualizing His higher ways and thoughts into the life of a human being…starting in the detailed life-script for Abraham…has a direct correlation today to the modern scientific discovery of complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated systems of information…that unearths through science the brilliant competence of a designing Creator having a conceptually perfect mastery over all of the aspects of the natural world…which then logically also extends into the moral realm of giving this same creatively perfect, intelligent Being the benefit-of-the-doubt…to present an equally credible, authoritative definition of truth, right and wrong…of best practices in human life…introduced into the marketplace of ideas by way of the biblical narrative stories of faith.
If the recent recognition in the last four to five decades of complex systems of information identified solely through human scientific investigation…which leads to the inescapable conclusion of the existence of intelligence as the causal explanation for the phenomenon we study in the living and non-living natural world…thereby eliminating the mindless and undirected naturalistic processes of materialism as being incapable of producing these complex systems of information…this also surprisingly removes the route of self-autonomy as a rationally plausible worldview option for human life.
If the imaginative brilliance of the composition of the architectural body-plans and related lifestyle habits of the tens of millions of living species on earth…clearly points towards the incredibly high intelligence of a designing Creator…this then also elevates the qualifications and the resume of this same God to skillfully displace our ways with His higher ways…in the form of an alternative God-composed journey of faith life-script…recognizing the obvious fact that we cannot live two different lives at the same time…one life lived within ordinary conventionality…and the other life revealing right and wrong in human life at the pinnacle of purpose and destiny.
The theme of these 10 posts is that Christians today should no longer be suspicious of science.
What are your thoughts?
The biblical storylines of Enoch (Gen. 5:21-24) and Noah (Gen. 6:8-9:29)…coming before Abraham…are short in length…and do not have the amount of detail to be able to analyze the element of faith being lived-out in their life-scripts.
The fully developed life-script for Abraham the “father of faith” inaugurates the biblical narrative stories of faith…his life-story recorded in writing beginning in Genesis 12:1…Genesis being the first “book” in the Bible…composed sometime around 1,450 B.C. according to the dating given by conservative scholarship.
The biblical narrative worldview of experiential faith…in God…actualized into a real human life…therefore enters very early into the social and cultural sea of multiple competing options for human life…coming into existence in writing around 1,450 B.C. at the beginning of the Hebrew Bible…the Christian Old Testament…and completed in the first-century around 62-64 A.D. in the New Testament book of Acts…closing-out the biblical narrative stories of faith…ending with the life-script of Paul making contact and speaking with the local Jews upon arriving in Rome…awaiting his upcoming trial before the emperor Nero.
To put this timing into context in terms of an early introduction of the biblical narrative into the ancient marketplace of ideas…the invention of writing itself only goes back to as recent a time as 3,200 B.C. in the wedge-shaped cuneiform lettering of Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the cuneiform alphabet in Syria around 2,000 B.C., and in the 22-sign Phoenician alphabet dated around 1,000 B.C. The Greeks adopt the Phoenician writing script around 800 B.C.
Very early therefore in recorded human history, a worldly unconventional concept was introduced into the marketplace of ideas…that was revolutionary then and is still revolutionary today…coming into existence abruptly out of nowhere…without transitionally incremental small steps of development leading-up beforehand…to the God of the Bible displacing our ways with His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9; 2 Tim. 1:9-10)…starting with the life-script of Abraham.
When Abraham receives his calling of God in the northern city of Haran…hearing God’s voice in the Spirit…and begins his journey south to Canaan the Land of Promise…with each step he takes…God is intentionally displacing…culturally and theologically…whatever “normal” life Abraham might otherwise have lived in Haran…as defined by ancient conventional thinking…instead bringing into existence the entirely new and innovative creation of a journey of faith following the leading of God…consisting of a new life-script that Abraham could not have dreamed-up in his wildest imagination…Abraham or any other ancient person at that time and place.
This displacement element…of the God of the Bible actualizing His higher ways and thoughts into the life of a human being…starting in the detailed life-script for Abraham…has a direct correlation today to the modern scientific discovery of complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated systems of information…that unearths through science the brilliant competence of a designing Creator having a conceptually perfect mastery over all of the aspects of the natural world…which then logically also extends into the moral realm of giving this same creatively perfect, intelligent Being the benefit-of-the-doubt…to present an equally credible, authoritative definition of truth, right and wrong…of best practices in human life…introduced into the marketplace of ideas by way of the biblical narrative stories of faith.
If the recent recognition in the last four to five decades of complex systems of information identified solely through human scientific investigation…which leads to the inescapable conclusion of the existence of intelligence as the causal explanation for the phenomenon we study in the living and non-living natural world…thereby eliminating the mindless and undirected naturalistic processes of materialism as being incapable of producing these complex systems of information…this also surprisingly removes the route of self-autonomy as a rationally plausible worldview option for human life.
If the imaginative brilliance of the composition of the architectural body-plans and related lifestyle habits of the tens of millions of living species on earth…clearly points towards the incredibly high intelligence of a designing Creator…this then also elevates the qualifications and the resume of this same God to skillfully displace our ways with His higher ways…in the form of an alternative God-composed journey of faith life-script…recognizing the obvious fact that we cannot live two different lives at the same time…one life lived within ordinary conventionality…and the other life revealing right and wrong in human life at the pinnacle of purpose and destiny.
The theme of these 10 posts is that Christians today should no longer be suspicious of science.
What are your thoughts?
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