Re: Origins: reply to George Murphy

Murphy (gmurphy@imperium.net)
Tue, 03 Sep 1996 12:39:00 -0400

Glenn Morton wrote:
>
> I knew this would get a rise out of someone on this list. :-)
>
> 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

1) "If Genesis 6-9 is false ..." To state the issue in that way
inevitably leads to the point being missed. Genesis 6-9 is true and
authoritative. OK. Now, WHAT TYPE OF LITERATURE IS IT? The common
mistake made by many people is to assume that if an account is not true
as history "as it really happened" then it isn't true at all, or has
some lesser degree of truth. The purpose of my earlier examples was to
show that this is just wrong.

2) Yes, God is strange according to our usual ways of thinking - cf. I
Cor.1:18-31. Much of this strangeness involves God's apparent
determination to be involved in the history of creation, and to limit
himself to acting within natural and historical processes. The
Incarnation is, of course, the center of this, but putting the witness
to himself at the vagaries of human modes of expression and human
capacities to understand is part of it too.

3) It's worth pointing out, though, that while external evidence
(science &c.) has forced Christians to rethink some traditional views
of the Bible, INTERNAL evidence also points to the fact that some parts
of Scripture are perhaps not to be understoof as historical chronicle.
The fact that Gen.1-2 gives TWO creation accounts which cannot BOTH be
undertood as such chronicles (PACE all those well-meaning commentators
who have labored to "harmonize" them AT THAT LEVEL (N.B.), usually by
mutilating Gen.2) suggests this. To a lesser extent, the presence of
different strands of tradition in the flood narrative does the same in
Gen.6-9. The situation is perhaps even clearer with the gospels.

SHALOM,
George Murphy