The Foundations of the Faith

Studies in Genesis 1-11

Sermon Number Thirty: The Doctrine of Humanism (part 1)

Jim Bordwine, Th.D.

Introduction

We come now to the last doctrine which we are going to consider in this study of Gen. 1-11. I’ll call this the doctrine of humanism—I’ll explain later what I mean by this term. First, let me note that after the flood, the Bible provides us with a record of how the earth was repopulated. In Gen. 10, we have what is called the “table of nations.” This list of the descendants of Noah suggests that he was the father of all nations through his three sons. Critics dismiss this notion as unacceptable, saying that it is too simple of an explanation of how the world’s population developed. Nevertheless, the Bible says what it says and one of the most valuable lessons to be gleaned from Gen. 10 is the unity of the human race.

As the Bible soon makes clear, only Israel, whose early history in father Abraham begins in Gen. 12, preserved the notion that all humanity was united under a common Creator and Law-Giver. This is a notion which men have tried to destroy throughout history and they have tried to destroy it by positing various theories regarding how we got here and to whom or to what, if anything, we are responsible. If the idea that we are all united as creatures of the one Creator can be undermined, then responsibility to Him and to one another, as wells as the thought of a single, objective standard of morality, can be dismissed. Chapter ten declares that all men have a common God and Judge and for this reason alone, the integrity of this chapter must be defended.

Then, in the eleventh chapter, we find the story of the tower of Babel. This is a simple and brief story. However, the implications of it are significant. In this chapter, we read of a united effort of human beings to establish for themselves, on their own terms and according to their desires, a monument which would stand as testimony to their achievement. This is an early example of humanism in which man’s focus is on himself and man’s goals are driven by self-centered motives. This is a simplified overview of what is revealed in Gen. 11 and we will see that the principles illustrated here are found elsewhere in Scripture as the relationship between God and man develops.

01. The Presentation of the Doctrine

Let’s give out attention to the first nine verses of Gen. 11:

1 Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. 2 And it came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. 4 And they said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6 And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

There are several things to notice in these verses. First, there is the condition or situation of mankind just after the flood but prior to the incident recorded in this chapter. The phrase, “the whole earth” is a way of saying “the population of the world.” Not surprisingly, we are told that everyone “used the same language and the same words.” (v. 1) Literally, the text says: “the whole earth used one lip and one kind of words.” This sounds repetitious, perhaps, but I what is being emphasized, I believe, is that all men spoke with the same inflections using the same vocabulary—their language truly was identical not only in the words used but also in pronunciation.

According to reliable calculations, we are about 100 years after the flood and the population of earth is around 30,000. They all, naturally, speak the same tongue, as has been stated, and the number of people is such that they could easily have cooperated on a project such as the one described in this chapter. At this point, the unity of the race is affirmed and preserved. This, as I mentioned in the Introduction, is an important aspect of this story and later Biblical revelation.

Further, we are told that the population “journeyed east,” which means that they migrated from Ararat, the place where the ark came to rest (v. 2; cf. 8:4) in a generally eastward direction. The writer says that “they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.” “Shinar” is otherwise known as Babylon or Southern Mesopotamia; this region was located southeast of Ararat and extended to the Persian Gulf. This is a broad, smooth region, one ideally situated to hold a large population. Moreover, this is an extremely fertile section of land which has been praised by ancient peoples. It is not difficult to understand why the people stopped traveling when they reached this area. Consequently, this is where the people “settled” (literally, “to sit down and remain”). This was an inviting place to establish a permanent dwelling.

Second, there is the plan to build a city and a tower. Remains which are to be found in this area show that towers regularly were part of the structure of cities. However, this is, apparently, the first attempt at such a structure in man’s history. Interestingly, later towers were actually temple-towers and were dedicated to some supposed guardian deity of the city. It may be, therefore, that subsequent generations still desired to build towers, but, being aware of the divine judgment associated with the first attempt, tried to protect themselves from the wrath of the gods by making the towers places of religious significance.

The writer uses the imperative, “Come,” in vv. 3 and 4 to indicate the determination and eagerness with which this project was initiated. They made bricks, burned thoroughly for strength; and they cemented them together using tar. Once again, remains of other cities in this region show that this description is completely accurate. Ancient structures built in this manner in Mesopotamia still stand to this day. The purpose of this determined effort is also revealed: “let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name; lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

Notice the significance of that statement: “let us build for ourselves a city”; “let us make for ourselves a name”; “lest we be scattered abroad...” Clearly, the motivation behind this project is pride and arrogance. When were God’s creatures told to build for themselves a city and when were they told to make for themselves a name? This is an expression of independence from God. Moreover, notice the aim of the tower itself: “whose top will reach into heaven.” I don’t think that this statement should be understood figuratively at all; I think these sinners truly believed that they could reach heaven. It hasn’t been that long, remember, since God walked with father Adam. Their aim was to join earth and heaven once again, as it were, but they were not taking into account the moral chasm which now separated them from their Creator.

And to pride and arrogance may be added disobedience. Recall that a mandate had been given to Adam and to Noah. Men were to “scatter abroad” and subdue the earth; they were not to concentrate themselves and their energies in one place. To do so was nothing less than disobedience to God’s command. Here, then, is pure sinful humanism. Here is fallen man trying to glorify himself while reaching heaven on his own terms even though he has a specific command from his Creator to the contrary. This desire of the earth’s population at this point and in this place is the beginning of every false religion and every false philosophy which fails to recognize the one true God and to submit to Him according to His commands.

Even this early in man’s history, we have this blatant disregard for God’s mandate and we have men doing what they want to do instead of doing what they were told to do—this is the core of humanism, this is the essence of a man-directed existence instead of a God-directed existence. We have men attempting to establish themselves in a manner that will glorify themselves instead of attempting to establish themselves in the earth in a manner which will glorify their Creator—this is humanism. We have men attempting to reach heaven in this literal way, instead of recognizing the truth of their plight and realizing that man no longer has communion with God and any effort to change that on man’s part is grossly illegitimate—this, too, is humanism. Humanism is the opposite of what is implied and required in the Creator-creature relationship. Humanism is thinking autonomously as if God’s commands do not apply.

Humanism, in it’s simplest, purest form, is the creature attempting to live apart from the laws of the Creator while, at the same time, trying to have some kind of relationship with deity. Humanism is the philosophy of fallen man; humanism is what he has produced, in varying forms with varying content, throughout his miserable history. He won’t obey God and won’t renounce his self-centeredness, but, at the same time, he wants a god. So, as I have pointed out, man tries to have all of this—his independence, his self-determination and, for good measure and to appease his wounded soul, a god of some sort to whom he can relate on his own terms. Humanism seeks unity not in the fear of God, but in the shared goals of depraved minds. This is what is behind the actions of these people as they journey from Ararat to Southern Mesopotamia and decide to stop, build a city and build a tower to heaven.

Third, we have the LORD’s reaction. Various explanations have been given for what the LORD does in these verses. But it seems clear to me that this is an act of intervention and judgment. The writer says that the LORD “came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.” (v. 5) This is another anthropomorphism, one which indicates definite action on God’s part—He came down from heaven, as it were, which means that He took note of what the people were doing and made a determination regarding its worthiness. This manner of describing God is unusual because the LORD often allows events to unfold in a seemingly natural way. But here we are told that He “came down” to inspect the work of His creatures.

Only rarely in Scripture do we read of Him actually intervening in such a dramatic fashion as this verse describes. He causes circumstances to change all the time, of course—or to be more correct, the LORD ordains circumstances, some as consequences for previous actions and some as directly determined by Him, but not often do we read that the LORD “came down” to inspect anything man does. The idea, then, is that God examined this conduct of His creatures. What they were doing was of such a nature that it required the LORD’s judgment as to whether it should continue or, as was in fact the case, was so misguided that it had to be stopped. To say that the LORD “came down” is similar to the previous story of the flood where we were told that the LORD “was grieved in His heart” when He saw the wickedness of man. The writer wants to convey the seriousness of what is going on.

The LORD states that the people “are one” and “all have the same language.” (v. 6) Whereas there is a proper unity to be recognized and pursued by men, this is not it. They are united in a project which God does not approve; it is a project that is contrary in design to His stated purpose for His creatures. The fact that they all speak one language only adds to the potential danger of their unity. Note that God says: “this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.” Obviously, the meaning is that no forbidden goal will be out of their reach now that they, as God’s creatures, have a perverted unity in rebellion and arrogance. In other words, this project, being built in defiance of God’s mandate, is only the first such wicked endeavor which will come forth from fallen man. And, if he is allowed to do what he wishes at this point in his history, then he will not spread out over the earth as God intends.

So, the LORD determines to take away the one essential element which would make fallen man capable of cooperating in future sinful undertakings: “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language...” (v. 7) If they cannot communicate, they cannot cooperate and if they cannot cooperate, they will scatter from one another. The word translated “confused” (balal) literally means “to mix.” The idea here is that the LORD confounded the population—and thus brought an end to their sinful designs—by causing them to speak different languages. That the disruption of this and similar projects is what God intended is clear when He states the purpose for confusing their languages: “that they may not understand one another’s speech.” A common language had enabled sinful man to organize and pursue his sinful goal; but if he has no common language, then the sinful impulses residing in every man’s heart will have no means of unifying in further acts of defiance. So the confusing of language was a simple, but extremely effective judgment of God.

There are questions unanswered in this story. We do not know, for example, exactly how the LORD confused the language. Some think He caused differences in the ability to hear and understand; some think He actually modified the speech of the people so that there were groups here and there who spoke identically and could therefore unite. And whether the result was immediate or gradual is not stated. The point is that the LORD put a stop to the building of the city and the tower because both the motivation and the goal were wrong. This brings us to the fourth and last thing to notice.

Fourth, we have the result of the LORD’s intervention. Due to God’s action, the people were scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth (v. 8). So a significant step is taken toward the fulfillment of the original command given to mankind. The people would not scatter and cover the earth voluntarily; instead they congregated in one place and determined to stay there and build for themselves a monument erected for their own glory. But now God has done something which prevents further cooperation and requires segregation into various camps. This leads naturally to a separation of the whole population into smaller sections. Bluntly, the writer states: “and they stopped building the city.” Truly, they had no choice. God did a simple thing but what He did was entirely effective, as I said, and resulted in the termination of the sinfully motivated building project.

The writer adds in v. 9 that “Babel” became the name of the place. “Babel” is a form of the word balal, the term translated “confuse” in v. 7. So, the place takes its name from God’s confounding of the language of the people. (cf. v. 9) The rest of v. 9 repeats the result that the people were scattered from that place over all the earth. Then, at this point, the Scripture concentrates on the line of descendants from which Abraham would come and, in Abraham, the beginning of God’s relationship with a particular people.

02. The Development of the Doctrine

...to be continued; note Pentecost, in particular

03. The Application of the Doctrine

This may not seem like all that important of a story. But, when you take into account the principles revealed in this story and when you take into account later revelation, the significance of this record soon becomes obvious. Babel, as I stated previously, was the beginning of every false religion and every false philosophy. This is the first time that you have mankind cooperating in an effort to do what God had forbidden and to do it based upon a shared set of presuppositions. Therefore, I want to spend a few minutes talking about those shared principles of belief.

I realize that there here is no danger that this congregation will decide this week that we are going to build a city and a tower as a means of establishing ourselves and making a name for ourselves. That is precisely why stories like the tower of Babel receive either little attention in the Church or misguided attention in the Church. We have a habit of only looking at the big picture, only considering the overall message of a story, whether it is the flood or the tower of Babel or some other well-known narrative in the Scripture. What we do not do is look closely at the elements in such stories to learn what principles were at work, principles which are not limited to a particular time or people or event, principles which are common among men and which, therefore, might just be at work in us and which might be producing similar, though scaled down, results.

As it turns out, what happens at the tower of Babel plays a tremendously significant part in the birth of the Church and the universal preaching of the gospel. But we’ll have to wait until the next sermon to see that connection. For now, I want to identify some of the principles which were at work in the minds of those people who traveled from Ararat to Shinar and I want to ask if these principles might possibly have some influence in your life. What we must keep in mind is that we have much in common with those folks who tried to build that tower to reach into heaven. We are sinners just like them and you can be sure that the sinful impulses which moved them are going to be found in us. Now the results might be more sophisticated—as I said, we are not motivated to go out and build monuments to ourselves in the same way—but maybe we are led to do other things just as much in error.

So, what can we say about the people who stopped in this place to build a city and a tower? I have picked only two of the most obvious presuppositions which they held. We’ll look at each one briefly.

First, there is the presupposition that if everyone agrees, it must be “ok.” We read: “Come, let us make bricks.... Come, let us build a city and a tower... let us make for ourselves a name...” (vv. 3, 4) It certainly appears that the people were of one mind. We don’t read of a dissenting voice, we don’t hear of anyone protesting this plan. No one speaks us and says, “Hey, wait a minute, is this really a good idea? Are we sure that we want to go ahead with this project?” Indeed, this is a classic case—perhaps the first one ever—where the phrase, “Well, everyone is doing it,” might just be rightly applied.

However, the outcome of the story reveals that when many misguided and ignorant people get together, what you have is a whole bunch of misguided and ignorant people in one place. What you do not have is wisdom. Wisdom is not necessarily produced by soliciting more and more opinions. Pooled foolishness or stupidity does not produce right thinking, it only produces some massive example of foolishness or stupidity. When you get a lot of disobedient and arrogant folks together, piety and humility are not the result; the result is one collective mass of disobedience and arrogance.

And so, young adults—I’ll use you for an example because you don’t mind if I pick on you—when you get together in a group to talk about theology, remember please that you are all ignorant and inexperienced—relatively speaking—and remember that an increase in your numbers in any given place just means that you have succeeded in producing one large mass of ignorance and inexperience. And so, when one in your number pipes up and makes some grand pronouncement about this issue or that issue—especially if what is being proposed runs contrary to what you’ve been taught or contrary to what the Church has believed for two thousand years—then stop, take a breath and ask yourself if that really makes sense.

Now you know that I’m teasing you a bit, but there is a serious side to this. Don’t assume that just because an idea has popular support or just because hearing something novel seems exciting that what you are dealing with is truth. This applies to your meetings with other Christian young people in this church and it also applies to those folks you encounter outside the church, folks who are going to be a lot less concerned about matters of faith. You have to be armed with the conviction that just because everyone is doing it or everyone believes it doesn’t make it so. There is an objective standard by which all ideas and pronouncements are to be measured and that standard is the word of God. That is what you have been taught and that is what the Church has believed and that is the challenge put before you. It doesn’t matter where an ideal comes from and it doesn’t matter how many people seem to be supporting it, it has to pass the test of being examined in the light of Scripture.

I’ve picked on the young people here for a few minutes but what I’ve said applies to us all. We all need to be on guard so that we don’t fall into the trap of accepting the notion that if everyone else is believing, saying or doing something, it must be “ok.” If everyone agrees, it is not necessarily “ok.” Now, if God agrees, then it is not only “ok” but great and good and required. The idea to build a city and a tower was a bad idea. That much is clear, isn’t it? So, the fact that everyone agreed to take on this project is not a reliable indicator that it was wise or that God would allow it. Remember the “tower of Babel syndrome” the next time you feel compelled to believe or do something because so many of your friends are believing it or doing it or because this culture seems to approve of it. This applies to the manner in which you dress, the manner in which you raise and educate your children, the music you listen to, the books you read, the recreation in which you engage, the way you conduct your finances, the way you run your home and the attitude you take to your job; and the list could go on and on.

Second, there is the presupposition that the focus of our existence is ourselves. Clearly, one of the driving factors behind the tower of Babel was pride. Those people had one shared point of view and it wasn’t a point of view in which God was the chief end of man; it was a point of view in which man was the chief end of man. And so, they set out to create something in this world that would make a statement and that would last long after them and that would testify to their ingenuity and their strength and their determination. The problem was, of course, that they were all wrong. They lived as if they were the center of the universe, as if they were supposed to do something which would forever establish man as the king of the world and master of his destiny and unconquerable conqueror.

We look at these folks and we scoff and think: “What a bunch of pompous morons! Look at the way they tried to glorify themselves and look at the way they lived as if the most important thing in the world was that those who came after them would know that they had already been here!” Well, I guess if we say this, that means that we aren’t at all guilty of living as if we are the focus of our existence. I guess that if we condemn the tower of Babel bunch then no one could find evidence in our lives that we sometimes live like the main point of our existence is our comfort and our ability to let those who come after us know that we were here once upon a time.

So, none of us would be guilty of worrying ourselves sick over how we are going to live the good life after we retire—as if that period in our lives is the goal toward which everything else is directed. And none of us would be guilty of surrounding ourselves with things—things to make music, things that make pictures, things that make us look good, things that make us feel good, things that make others like us, things that fatten us up, things that slim us down, things that make us smell good, things that make us sleep well, things that make us just as comfortable as we can possibly be.

We all know that we are the most self-absorbed, self-gratifying generation ever to come along. We do live as if the focus of our existence is ourselves—meaning what we have, what we accomplish, what we leave behind and how comfortable we are in the process. How else to you explain microwave ovens—how self-absorbed do you have to be to demand that something be heated in 30 seconds or less? And what about one minute oatmeal, cushioned shoe inserts, a hundred brands of deodorant—I mean, just what is the point? What about having roughly 200 channels of so-called “entertainment” flowing through your television? What about bottled water (flavored bottled water, no less)? I remember my wife saying a few years ago that soon, we would be able to buy chilled bottles of water out of a machine just like soft drinks. I thought that was an absurd idea—who would pay for a bottle of water, I remember thinking.

(James’ cast)

This is just a minute selection of some of the most insignificant comforts and choices which we have in our lives; the whole list is mind-boggling and all the choices stem from our demand to have as much flexibility and as much convenience as possible; and that notion stems from our belief, be it ever so well hidden, that the focus of our existence is ourselves. We have to be on guard constantly against the idea that this life is for us instead of for God. This is especially true we live in a society where comfort and self-gratification are key goals. Make sure that your life is not being spent in the pursuit of that which leaves a testimony concerning you, but has little or nothing to say about your God. This life is an opportunity to honor the LORD, day after day, in the things we have and want, in the actions we take and in the goals we accomplish. Don’t let your life amount to a miniature version of the tower of Babel. Take a look at where you are right now. What are your goals? How do you want to live? What kind of legacy are you going to leave when you’re gone? Make sure that, as far as it is in your control to do so, your life is being lived in a way that honors God, not yourself.

Conclusion