{"id":20500,"date":"2014-01-08T08:41:23","date_gmt":"2014-01-08T13:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=20500"},"modified":"2014-01-08T08:41:23","modified_gmt":"2014-01-08T13:41:23","slug":"god-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/01\/god-at-work.html","title":{"rendered":"God at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/01\/Genesis-1-3-God-at-Work.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-20501\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/01\/Genesis-1-3-God-at-Work.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"413\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>There are lots of problems with a literalistic approach to Genesis, and to the Bible in general. But the biggest is that it denies that God so transcends our human comprehension that God can only be pointed to through symbols.<\/p>\n<p>The final editor of Genesis presumably understood this. He placed side by side two depictions of God creating which have different orders, chronologies, and other details. And so in addition to being a rejection of the God the Bible points to, so-called Biblical literalism also represents a stubborn refusal to pay close attention of the details of what the Bible actually says. And so it is worth pointing out yet again that those who claim to take Genesis 1-3 literally are not actually doing that.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, depicting God at work in an anthropomorphic way becomes even more problematic when you bring science into the picture, as <a href=\"http:\/\/peopleinwhitecoats.blogspot.com\/2012\/06\/creation-conundrum.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">this cartoon from People in White Coats<\/a> illustrates:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/01\/GodAtWork.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-20502\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2014\/01\/GodAtWork.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"406\"><\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are lots of problems with a literalistic approach to Genesis, and to the Bible in general. But the biggest is that it denies that God so transcends our human comprehension that God can only be pointed to through symbols. The final editor of Genesis presumably understood this. He placed side by side two depictions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":20501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[675,2269,3840,6618,6621,13623,13855],"class_list":["post-20500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genesis-bible","tag-anthropomorphism","tag-creation","tag-genesis-bible","tag-literal","tag-literalism","tag-week","tag-work"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>God at Work<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"There are lots of problems with a literalistic approach to Genesis, and to the Bible in general. But the biggest is that it denies that God so transcends\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/01\/god-at-work.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"God at Work\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are lots of problems with a literalistic approach to Genesis, and to the Bible in general. But the biggest is that it denies that God so transcends\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/01\/god-at-work.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/religionprof\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-01-08T13:41:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"James F. McGrath\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ReligionProf\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"James F. 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