The Bible In One Year - Day 5 (Genesis 10-11, Psalm 2)

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Tower of Babel (Pieter Bruegel the Elder)  

Day 5: Tower of Babel 

A Commentary
The Tower of BabelThe Great Adventure: Session 3 Early World Part 2 
Understanding the Scriptures - The Didache Series 

Chapter 10  and 11 are called the "Table of Nations" because they tell which nations came from each of Noah's sons. The most interesting list is the descendants of Ham.  Egypt, Canaan, Philistia, Assyria, and Babylon all come from Ham's line.  In other words, all the nations that were the enemies of the Israelites are descendants of the wicked Ham.  The people of Israel would see this list as a rogues' gallery of evil oppressors.  On the other had, the descendants of Shem would be the ancestors of the People of God.  

After the genealogies comes another of the more famous stores in Genesis, the Tower of Babel.  The descendants of Ham who settled in the Plain of Shinar (ancient Mesopotamia, which is in modern Iraq) decided to make a name for themselves.  Again as we noted earlier in this study, the word "name" in  Hebrew is "shem."  The Hamites are saying they intend to make a "shem" for themselves and rebel against the covenant authority of Shem, the first-born of Noah.   

The tower builders think they can reach heaven by themselves without God or following God's ways. Now God intervened and put a stop to this by confusing their language.  Before this time the people of the Bible had all spoken the same language.  But suddenly they could not understand each other. 

Side note:  At Pentecost, when the Spirit of God fell on the disciples, they began speaking in other languages so that people from every corner of the earth understood them.  The opposite of the Tower of Babel representing God gathering his lost children to himself and his Church. 

Anyway back to Babel.  Though the people gave up the project, the city remained and would be known as Babel or Babylon and be the symbol of everything that was evil and decadent.  

Now it might seem from what we have just read, that God's punishment of man with the flood didn't work.  Some might say, "Why doesn't God just wipe out all the bad people and let us enjoy our lives?"  Well he kind of already did with the flood, but that didn't and wasn't intended to fix the inherent evil that lies deep within human nature and affects all of us. 

In the New Testament we will see that full restoration with God will require more.  Under the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, the Church and baptism will do what the Ark and the Flood only pointed to.  They will drown the sinful nature within people, purify them, restore them to new life in Jesus Christ, and place them in the family of God, which is the Church. Yet this Baptism does not mean we will be without sin.  Temporal consequences of the Fall, our inclination to sin, remain and we will wrestle with this all along our life journey.  Anyway, I was sidetracked.  

Back to the Bible. Meanwhile, the people of Shem went on worshiping God.  And chapter 11 gets back to the "Table of Nations."  A few more generations later we will be introduced to the next major character of Genesis, Abram.  

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A Daily Defense
Day 5 Sola Scriptura
CHALLENGE: “It is a foundational principle that you need to be able to prove your theological beliefs by Scripture alone, and Catholics can’t do that.”

DEFENSE: Sola scriptura may be a foundational principle of Protestantism, but not of Catholicism. 

Further, it does not meet its own test. Catholics do not accept the principle of sola scriptura (“Scripture alone”), and so they have no need to justify their theological beliefs using only the Bible. In many apologetic discussions, it can be helpful to do so, since many Christian and non-Christian groups see Scripture, or parts of it, as an important source of information, and its role as a commonly recognized authority is helpful. 

But one should not fall into the trap of thinking that Catholics have that obligation. 

It can also be helpful in discussions with Protestants to directly challenge sola scriptura , because it has a serious problem: If theological beliefs need to be proved by Scripture alone, then so does sola scriptura . Its advocates need to produce verses showing that every theological belief must be provable by Scripture alone, and this cannot be done. 

There are verses its advocates sometimes appeal to (some of which we deal with elsewhere; see Days 50 and 177), but none says or implies what is claimed. We can point out that all such verses were written before the canon was finished. At that time, sola scriptura was not in operation, for Christians were bound to accept the teaching of the apostles, whether it was written or oral (2 Thess. 2:15; cf. 1 Cor. 11:2). 

Consequently, for a verse to prove sola scriptura , it would need to indicate that there would be a shift in how Christians form their beliefs in the postapostolic age. Yet there are no verses that say things such as, “After we apostles are dead, everything we said orally loses its authority; you are to look only to Scripture,” or, “We apostles have agreed to make sure all of our teachings are written down in Scripture, so use only that to settle theological questions after we are gone.” In the absence of verses saying or implying these things, sola scriptura does not meet its own test and thus is a self-refuting doctrine.

Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense: 365 Days (Plus One) to Becoming a Better Apologist