Genesis and Paganism

I am pretty sure those of us with children have been asked all kinds of question. However, I don't think many of you have been asked this particular question (please let me know if this is not the case): "What is paganism?" It came from the backseat of our car, from our 6-year-old daughter.

My smart wife, as usual, quickly deflected the question to me. "Papa, why don't you answer this?" After a brief thought, I said that different people define it differently but from the perspective of the Scripture it just means that all other worship that is not directed toward God the Father.

It has been a couple of weeks since and after doing a little research on the Net, I found this definition of pagan from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1: heathen 1 ; especially : a follower of a polytheistic religion (as in ancient Rome)

2: one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods : an irreligious or hedonistic person

3: neo-pagan (a person who practices a contemporary form of paganism (as Wicca))

According to Bruce Waltke in his book, An Old Testament Theology, the creation narrative in Genesis was written to:

Israel in the Wilderness, who was on their way from Egypt to Canaan, both places saturated with pagan mythology. In their annual rites, the practitioner re-enact their pagan creation myths, hopeful to have the land and womb fertile and fruitful for coming year. The human actually have the tools and means to manipulate the divine sphere. Moses presented a revolutionary message, one that went against the dominating messages of the cultures. One that presented a personal God, uncreated, creating order out of chaos. Human was created under the Sovereign dominion of God.

Israel in Babylonian Exile, the creation narrative, though part of the original Mosaic core of material, likely reached its final form during Israel's exile in Babylon. Deities with names like: Marduk (the creator and chief deity), Adal (the storm god), Ishtar (the fertility god), Tiamat (the ancient goddess Tiamat who was destroyed by Marduk and her carcass was made into heaven and earth).

The Genesis 1 creation narrative is directed toward the harmful (toward biblical faith) ancient and modern pagan ideas. Waltke then quoted H. Conrad Hyer who said that each day of creation dismisses an additional cluster of deities (the gods of light and darkness, gods of sky and sea, gods of earth and vegetation, gods of sun, moon, and star), takes away associations with divinity from the animal kingdom, empties human being of any intrinsic divinity.

Modern paganism has six faces:

1. Materialism, since the Enlightenment, is the common view. It is the philosophical theory that regards matter and its motions as constituting the entire universe; all phenomena, including those of the mind, are regarded as due to material causes.

2. Since everything is material, then this leads to empiricism, insists that all knowledge is based on observation, experimentation, and verification, this has led to belief in a self-sufficient universe that can be understood on its own terms, without any need of the transcendent or God.

3. Materialism and empiricism led to determinism, and understanding of reality as mechanical and valueless. The origin of life and the nature of our humanity are determined by natural causation.

4. Secularism, is a system of political or social philosophy that embraces materialism, empiricism, and natural causation and rejects all forms of religious faith and worship in the public sphere.

5. Secular humanism, any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate. It does not acknowledge God and God's ownership of the created order.

6. Post-modernism or New Ageism is a return to old-fashioned paganism with a modern twist. Eastern religions (Taoism, Buddhism, and to a degree Hinduism) was appropriated and their terms were distorted with Western concepts. Personal "spirituality" replaces the personal God.

Genesis 1 comes with two clear messages: (1) God, the uncreated, almighty sovereign Creator has created the universe and the living beings, creating order out of chaos, over against the Egyptians who thought that anything outside of Egypt was in chaos, (2) the humans are created to worship the Sovereign Creator.

 

~oOo~