To see the love here in its labours lost our eyes must grow accustomed to the dark. They see it best who sorrow at his side, the mother and the friend who loved him most. They see his harrowed flesh, the blood, the dirt. They feel the pangs that wrench him from the wood and hurl him back, torn, tethered by the nails. They hear his silent thirsting for his God. The darkness darker than the dread of death descends... Read more

Q. You argue that being in the image of God is something conveyed by God to a group of human beings at some juncture. You call it a status. I don’t agree with this, any more than I agree with the Catholic notion that the image=the soul which was infused at some point into a person or persons, making them ‘in the image’. The problem it seems to me is twofold: 1) the Hebrew says they were created that way,... Read more

Q. On p. 51 you rightly describe Yahweh as not gendered and not sexually active, unlike the description of various if not all other ANE deities. Yet somehow God ends up being called Father, though that specific language is actually rare in the OT and plentiful in the NT. Chris Seitz has suggested that the father language is linked to the creator language. He is father because he is the origin of all human beings, whereas in the NT God... Read more

Q. G. E. Wright of Harvard fame used to talk about how the Hebrews took pagan mythological ideas and demythologized them. He concludes (as does B. Childs later I believe) that the Hebrews were not a myth making people. What is your view on these things? A. Of course it depends on how you define myth, but I would say that the Bible takes what we would call mythological ideas from the surrounding nations and applies them to God often... Read more

Q. It seems obvious from the literary artistry of the creation accounts (including rhythm and rhyme—e.g tohu wubohu) that the author is not attempting to give us a scientific description of exactly how creation happened. Further, why would God download a scientific description on a pre-scientific people who would only be befuddled by it? It seems odd that many conservative Christians feel like the Bible must be evaluated in modern terms based on our own modern ways of viewing the... Read more

Q. At one point in the first chapter you say ‘genre triggers reading strategy’. But how exactly is one to discern when the author is speaking figuratively and when more literally if this is ‘theological history’? I agree there is considerable figurative language in the Gen. 1-3 account, but it also seems clear the author, like Jesus and Paul later, sees Adam and Eve as ancient historical persons. A. With all due respect, I’m afraid I don’t agree that Jesus... Read more

Q. In discussing Gen. 1-11 you choose the label theological history, by which, I take it, you do not mean theologized history (i.e. mundane history without divine involvement given a theological interpretation), nor do you mean historicized theology (by which is meant that basically the material is theology, perhaps with a historical veneer). Explain what you mean by theological history. A. The label theological history does not intend to undermine the idea that a narrative describes events that happen in... Read more

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Q. On p. 25 you say “When we interpret the Bible correctly it will never conflict with science if science is correctly interpreting nature.” Explain what you mean by that? A. This flows from the “two books” idea that we find in the Belgic Confession which itself articulates the truth that God speaks to us through his Word and through nature (based on Romans 1 and other teachings in Scripture). Both books require interpretation. The Bible is totally true in... Read more

Q. You use the two books metaphor to refer to the Bible and to nature, and what we can learn about God from each. I was reminded of 1 Kings 19, where we are told, that other than a general impression that there is an almighty God who created it all (so Rom. 1), you can’t discern God’s will from analyzing nature (tell that to the insurance companies that talk about acts of God when they mean natural disasters). 1... Read more