George wrote:
>Glenn Morton wrote:
>>
>
>> That being said, I think two things have led to the present situation.
> First, the people in the pews do not generally buy the line of
>reasoning that the Bible can be historically false in Genesis and yet
>true theologically or true in some mystical fashion.
>
> Many people in the pews - or at least those I preach to - are
>able to be more sensitive to the variety of biblical literature than
>this remark would suggest.
I am delighted for you. Generally speaking down here, they aren't.
Ask yourself the following questions:
> 1) Is the 23d Psalm being declared "historically false" and
>interpreted in a weak sense if the expositor recognizes that people are
>not sheep and that God doesn't feed them grass?
Psalms is poetry. I don't necessarily want to defend historicity in poetry. I
was not saying that I ascribed to all the views I was presenting in that
post. Differentiate me from what I was believeing to be the problem.
That said, I must admit that there is something quite strange about a God who
is powerful enough to raise a man from the dead and is powerful enough to
convey what actually happened to us in the form of the New Testament, and is
powerful enough to create the entire universe, but is not powerful enough to
convey to mankind what actually happened at the creation. And the objection
that the Hebrews would not have understood modern science is fallacious. God
could have simply said, "I created man from the slime in the sea." That would
have been sufficient to get across the proper idea. All in all this is a
strange God indeed.
However, Genesis 6-9 does not appear any different than Genesis 20-50. It
would appear to me that if Genesis 6-9 is false, then why should the
patriarchal chapters be true?
> 2) Does the truth, in the deepest sense which Jesus intended, of
>the story of the good Samaritan dependent upon it being "historically
>true" - i.e., in principle verifiable from the Jerusalem police blotter?
> 3) Does anyone in his or her right mind think that PILGRIM'S
>PROGRESS is "historically true" - or that it's not true at all because
>it's allegory?
> 4) Should a person who can't tell the difference in TYPE
>between a love letter and a letter from the IRS be let out on the street
>alone?
> After all this, it shouldn't be so hard to see that the Genesis
>creation accounts CAN be profoundly true without being accurate
>historical accounts.
I would prefer to skip Genesis 1. What about Genesis 6-9 which are not part
of the creation accounts.
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm