>3. It may not be His purpose to deal with issues outside the essentials of
>His relationship with us. What does the Bible itself say about God's
>purposes in inspring it to be written? One of my favorites is Jn 20:31:
>but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the
>Christ, the son of God; and that believing you may have life. Does
>Scripture teach anywhere that God intends to give us a detailed account of
>natural history?
Hi Bill,
It is good to discuss things with you again. Obviously God does not promise
us a detailed account of natural history. But this misses the point. A
sketchy account of natural history can be TRUE but INCOMPLETE. God could
have said, "In the beginning, life came from slime" Under the evolutionary
account that would be a true but non-detailed account of origins. What I
object to is God inspiring a book which says "I created things ex-nihilo"
when He didn't. This is an UNTRUE and INCOMPLETE account of creation. It
is the UNTRUE portion that bothers me. Scripture says God is truth. It also
says He inspired the Bible writers. But God can't be truth when he inspires
falsehoods.
If God can inspire a man to lie for him about creation, how can I trust what
he says about the plan of salvation? The issue is really one of inspiration.
If someone can show that the Genesis accounts were not inspired by God,
then we can drop it from the Bible and not have anymore discussion on
creation/evolution. But if Genesis is inspired, but it tells us fictional
stories about non-existant people like Abraham, Joseph, Rachael etc, what
does that say about God's nature?
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm