James Ussher
Why Me? In the beginning
20/January/2010 10:18 Filed in: Weekly
Column
Psalm 8
O LORD, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants
You have ordained strength,
Because of Your enemies,
That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen—
Even the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea
That pass through the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth!
I shall assume that I am not alone when I consider the transcendence revealed in these words impossible to reconcile with the fact that so many say that this nature, this creation, all happened as the result of a freakish random event called the Big Bang some fourteen billion years ago. I don’t really see that calling it the Great Singularity really makes any change in that reality!
Of course, perhaps the result of my eccentric audacity, I also find it almost as difficult to believe that God began creating the heavens and the earth, as in the biblical creation account, on October 23, 4004 B. C., based on the Julian Calendar. This creation date was proposed by James Ussher in “The Annals of the Old Testament” published in 1650. The Protestant Ussher was Bishop of the Church of Ireland at this time and was hopeful that his chronology would help Irish Roman Catholics convert to the Protestant faith.
Furthermore I assume that both of these theories of creation stem from a basic but ignored truth. The sixteenth-century reformers, especially Martin Luther and John Calvin assumed that the minds of men were basically idol factories. This is verified first of all by empirical observation, but also in the Bible illumination of Jeremiah 17:9, The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
Calvin went so far as to compile a little pamphlet called the “Inventory of Relics” that listed all the divine antiquities of the established church. Whether that included just those of the Roman Catholic persuasion, or included also those of the Eastern Orthodox, I do not know. In any event, I would imagine the list was rather long and quite boring reading for twenty-first century tastes, but snippets are available on the Internet to get the general idea.
If God thought that the actual date of creation was a requirement for his plan of redemption of humanity, that date surely would have been codified within scripture. The same is true for the actual date of birth of Jesus, but that is a different story, and only listed here to show mankind’s idol making enthusiasms.
Read More...
O LORD, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth,
Who have set Your glory above the heavens!
Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants
You have ordained strength,
Because of Your enemies,
That You may silence the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have ordained,
What is man that You are mindful of him,
And the son of man that You visit him?
For You have made him a little lower than the angels,
And You have crowned him with glory and honor.
You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;
You have put all things under his feet,
All sheep and oxen—
Even the beasts of the field,
The birds of the air,
And the fish of the sea
That pass through the paths of the seas.
O LORD, our Lord,
How excellent is Your name in all the earth!
I shall assume that I am not alone when I consider the transcendence revealed in these words impossible to reconcile with the fact that so many say that this nature, this creation, all happened as the result of a freakish random event called the Big Bang some fourteen billion years ago. I don’t really see that calling it the Great Singularity really makes any change in that reality!
Of course, perhaps the result of my eccentric audacity, I also find it almost as difficult to believe that God began creating the heavens and the earth, as in the biblical creation account, on October 23, 4004 B. C., based on the Julian Calendar. This creation date was proposed by James Ussher in “The Annals of the Old Testament” published in 1650. The Protestant Ussher was Bishop of the Church of Ireland at this time and was hopeful that his chronology would help Irish Roman Catholics convert to the Protestant faith.
Furthermore I assume that both of these theories of creation stem from a basic but ignored truth. The sixteenth-century reformers, especially Martin Luther and John Calvin assumed that the minds of men were basically idol factories. This is verified first of all by empirical observation, but also in the Bible illumination of Jeremiah 17:9, The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?
Calvin went so far as to compile a little pamphlet called the “Inventory of Relics” that listed all the divine antiquities of the established church. Whether that included just those of the Roman Catholic persuasion, or included also those of the Eastern Orthodox, I do not know. In any event, I would imagine the list was rather long and quite boring reading for twenty-first century tastes, but snippets are available on the Internet to get the general idea.
If God thought that the actual date of creation was a requirement for his plan of redemption of humanity, that date surely would have been codified within scripture. The same is true for the actual date of birth of Jesus, but that is a different story, and only listed here to show mankind’s idol making enthusiasms.
Read More...