Crayon Theology

Oh my goodness, he was serious!

A couple of days ago, Paul Manata posted this response to these absurd questions of John Loftus. Really, I thought that Loftus was just trying to be cute and was posting some stupid questions just to 1) crack some jokes with his atheistic brethren, and 2) irritate the poor Christian folks that have to put up with this type of “scholarship.” Little did I know that Loftus actually endorsed this ludicrosity. Today, he tells us what’s wrong with the story of Cain:

God’s judgment upon Cain for killing his brother Abel was to be a wanderer. Cain is deathly afraid of this and says: “whoever finds me will kill me.” So God places a mark on him so that “no one who found him would kill him.” (v.14). Now who is Cain afraid of here? Supposedly the only people on earth were his mom and dad, and a few sisters.

“Supposedly”? Who’s supposing that; you, or the Biblical text? From what I see from the text, it merely tells us that Cain was born first, that later Adam and Eve gave birth to Abel, and that after Abel’s death Seth was born and was seen in the eyes of Eve as the Lord’s granting her a replacement for Abel. But who says that Adam and Eve didn’t have a multitude of children in between the birth of Cain and Abel, or after the birth of Abel and before the birth of Seth? Adam had Seth at the age of 130 and died at the age of 930 (according to the text). Are we to believe that he merely had 3 children during his lifetime? I mean, if you lived 930 years, you could have had hundreds of children, could you not?

It’s funny how atheists completely abandon an accurate definition of the law of non-contradiction when it comes to the Biblical text (mainly, that A cannot equal non-A), for surely Loftus will tell me that I am contradicting the Biblical text, or that the Biblical text contradicts the actual occurrence. But does it? Does the fact that God’s Word has a purpose to it, mainly, to tell his work of redemption, mean that his lack of telling us every detail entails a contradiction? Is not the statement that this involves a contradiction simply a worthless joke? Is not my explanation of the text here a reasonable one (Loftus later tells us that there is no reasonable way to interpret this account)?

Then it says, “Cain lay with his wife.” (v.17). Where did he get a wife? Nothing was said about that, but presumably the author isn’t interested in such matters. Why? It’s because the author of chapters 3-11 was stressing the sinfulness of human beings. God created the world good, but look how his highest creation behaves—he behaves very very badly. Human beings are very sinful beginning with Adam and Eve’s disobedience, to Cain killing his brother, to the flood where God destroyed everyone but Noah and his family, to the tower of Babel. Human beings are very sinful and ungrateful for what God has done.

Here, Loftus seems to get it. But, I’m sorry man, to simply tell a reasonable explanation with a sarcastic, unbelieving tone is not the same thing as scholarly critiquing an account. It isn’t enough, Mr. Loftus, to simply mock the Christian’s belief in God’s purpose in inspiring Scripture. That does not get the job done on your part.

Notice that Loftus gives us no reason why such an explanation would be wrong. The Biblical text leaves open a number of possibilities, but, for some reason, Loftus simply makes fun of these possibilities along side of making fun of God’s marvelous work in Scripture.

To try to make sense of where Cain got his wife is to miss the point of these chapters. It has the feel of a story with a point, not a statement about marrying sisters.

Yes and no. One does not have to “make sense” of these texts; it is only when atheists use a children’s Sunday School understanding of Genesis as their authority that these texts become confusing. As Loftus wrote this article, he was probably busy remembering those days in children’s church where he had to color the picture of Adam and Eve and Abel, one big (that is, small), happy family. When crayon theology is your standard, you won’t get very far. Loftus was probably the kid in the class who asked the “teacher” (that is, the girl who’s a senior in high school doing her best to serve the church) where Cain got his wife (since we all know that Adam and Eve didn’t have any daughters, right?). The whole class probably giggled. After that embarrassing situation, Loftus probably kept the question inside of himself, even during his days of pastoring the church, only to bring it up again (with no evolution of the nature of the argument) on his atheist blog years later. But, could we perhaps graduate from crayon theology, please?

Loftus is always quick to slander the past. I mean, does he really think that his crayon, children’s church understanding of these narratives is so ingenious compared to the intelligence of the Biblical authors? I mean, would a Biblical author really be so stupid as to tell a story which allows for marriage between Cain and another woman but doesn’t allow the for the procreation of any women? I mean, is Loftus really that arrogant to think that the past Biblical authors were so blinded by some mythology that they would ignore such obvious details that even the Sunday School kid notices?

Then it says when Cain’s wife gave birth to his firstborn, Enoch, Cain was in the process of “building a city.” (v.17). If we try to make sense of this we simply cannot do it. Cain is banished from his parents and marked so that no one who finds him will kill him. He gets a wife and starts to build a city, and while doing so Enoch is born. None of this makes much sense given the whole setting. A city? Instead, maybe it should have read, “Cain was building a house.” But a whole city?

Loftus continues to frustrate himself, telling us that we “simply cannot” “make sense” out of this narrative. Don’t break your crayons yet, Mr. Loftus. What is a “city”? If you will remember how the book of Genesis (as well as the other books of Moses) relays to us the stories of tribes and clans, we’ll often find that families congregated with each other on land that was probably the size of a small city. Land was bountiful then, was it not? The world wasn’t too crowded, was it? Could not Cain and his wife, his children, and his children’s wives and their children all congregate together on a large piece of land and build a “city”? Must we really rely so heavily on the cartoon picture of our coloring books to the extent that we can “simply cannot” “make” any “sense” out of this story?

It’s always great when atheists take 21st century science and force it upon Biblical literature. Not that there is anything in the Bible which contradicts a fair approach to science, but that the one critiquing the Biblical narrative fails to adopt Biblical assumptions in his assuming the legitimacy of empirical examination. But, in an atheistic outlook so what if the Bible contradicts science? The atheist cannot account for the uniformity of nature anyway, so why should he assume that the scientific properties from thousands of years ago hold up to today’s standards? I say this because Loftus will probably find the notion that Adam lived to be 930 years old preposterous. But why is this notion, according to Biblical assumptions, preposterous? Why is it that Loftus is willing to listen to what the Bible says as it tells the story, but so unwilling to adopt the same assumptions, such as God’s purpose in inspiring Scripture?

Enjoy the theologica de crayola, while the rest of us have scholarly conversations.

Evan May.