3 January 2012

De-godding God

There is, I think, a futher ramification to denying the direct reading of the creation account in the Bible beyond my post on eclectic creation and the one on de-godding.

That is, not only is the creation de-godded, but God himself suffers this process, in his being represented as other than his own self-representation.

Moves such as 'theistic'-evolution make God's self-proclaimed acts to be of other than God: a process, or matter itself. It undoes God.

Now, this may not be a problem for many commentators on the topic of origins, as most think the cosmos has been thoroughly de-godded anyway. Even for many ostensibly Christian commentators, the cosmos has been de-godded along deistic or gnostic lines, following a pagan, rather than a biblical lead.

But for conservative evangelicals the implications are more than stark.

God places nothing but himself between 'said' and 'is was so'. The interpolators go beyond the text and say that there is something in between. That God has not told us the full story, and that mechanical process is there. Over time, God will thus be 'faded' from his palpable presence in our life-story (man's life-story) to be replaced by another agent; not a personal one, but at best an occult one (occult as in 'hidden' and not known, if not unknowable) and at worst a completely material one, that is set free from God, his personhood and love for his creation.

The genesian connection between creation and creator is direct and unmediated (but by Christ). There is nothing impersonal between us and God as maker. In alternative views, this is destroyed, and we end up with a removed God, if God at all.