Re: Johnson's assumptions
Jan de Koning (75674.3121@CompuServe.COM)
28 Jan 97 12:39:32 EST Johnson's assumptions go back a long way, but they are not based on a
biblical concept of Truth. Rather, his assumptions ( and the assumptions of
many other Christians in Science) go back to a pagan Greek understanding of
truth. In his zeal for the Christian faith Johnson did not research his own
assumptions very well. By the way, none of us usually does. We usually follow
the one who taught us philosophy and/or theology. If we take the doctrine of
Total Depravity into account, we do not have to be very harsh on Johnston. In
this case he "only" has to research the concept of "Truth" in the bible as used
in the original. Unfortunately, we cannot just depend on translations.
Translations are most of the time affected by the thinking of the translator.
My philosphy prof. (Vollenhoven) taught me in the past (1942) to check the words
"ruach","nephesh" in Hebrew, and "psyche", "pneuma" in Greek, and see how they
are translated in English. Last Sunday a Theology prof. said that the same was
true for the word translated in the NIV by "power."
Unfortunately, Johnson is not the only one using that type of concept of
"Truth." His opponents often do, and come (sometimes) to all kinds of
(scientifically) strange conceptions of what the bible says. In the bible
(often) a Hebrew way of telling "Truth" is used: telling stories. Scientifical
reasoning is foreign to the bible.
One last point here. We should not try to convince everyone of our point
of view. Our salvation does not depend on it, and we have to realize, that
talking one way or the other about these issues may lead others astray. After
all, a lot of studying is involved in just understanding the backgrounds. I
hope, that I just showed how I see, that many at both sides of the issue are
using unchristian concepts. Also, I hope that I showed how we can study thes
issues. It is probably too big an issue to do so in our conversations here.
By the way: why do we say "Creation vs Evolutio", as if it is either
Creation or Evolution? I think, that just stating it that way gets someone's
heckles up.
Jan de Koning
Willowdale, Ont.