> >Read any evangelical
> >book on biblical inspiration and it will always finally hang its conclusion
> >on this syllogism:
> >
> >God cannot lie
> >The Bible is God's word
> >Therefore, the Bible cannot contain any lies and is hence inerrant in all
> >that it says including its science and history.
> >
> >That is the syllogism that holds Evangelicalism in its grip.
>
> I do agree with your analysis here.
>
> >It is the
> >syllogism that supplies the foundation for creation science. And, it is the
> >syllogism that makes many evangelicals look upon those of us in the ASA as
> >less than solid Christians.
> >
> >The way out of this dilemma is to recognize through the teaching of Jesus
> >that the divine inspiration of Scripture can encompass temporary CONCESSION
> >to cultural beliefs that are contrary to God's perfect knowledge, contrary,
> >as one scholar put it, to God's personal opinion. The proof of this is in
> >Matthew 19:8 (Mk 10:5) where Jesus points out that Deut 24:1-4 encompassed
> >concession to the culturally acceptable practice of the times of divorcing
> >wives for reasons other than adultery. (The law could not refer to adultery
> >because in cases of adultery the wife was stoned.)
>
> But doing this opens a big can of subjective worms. I can claim that there
> really was no resurrection and that it was merely a temporary concession to
> the cultural beliefs at the time that men could rise from the dead. Thus
> the REAL meaning of Christianity has nothing to do with the resurrection.
> It was merely an incorpration of the pagan cycle of winter/spring rituals
> (death then life resurrects). ........................................
To which I can respond by examining the ways the resurrection is presented
in the NT with a view to seeing if they are those typical of such religions of a
"Corn God" & finding that (while there is some overlap of language &c) they don't
- C.S. Lewis' brief discussion in _Miracles_ is helpful. & then we will look at the
work of theologians like Pannenberg who present good scholarly arguments to the effect
that the accounts of resurrection appearances & empty tomb, while not blow by blow
historical chronicles,
1) are certainly intended to argue for something which really happened to Jesus
of Nazareth & which was experienced by contemporary witnesses, and
2) have to be taken seriously in the basic claims they make.
I.e., one has to look carefully at the literature.
Paul is right that Scripture makes concessions to views of the world and history
which we now think outdated. But more to the point is that Scripture has other ways of
telling the truth than straight historical or scientific description. We've been over &
over this but it bears repeating (at least as long as the "truth is identical with
historical accuracy" paradigm keeps being repeated): The Bible contains parables,
metaphors, liturgies, hymns, &c & is not thereby failing to convey truth. Whether or
not particular texts actually belong to one of those genres or are closer to straight
history is another matter. But it is invalid to deal with any given biblical text as
follows:
Everything in the Bible is true.
Only historical narrative can be true.
Therefore this biblical text is historical narrative.
& it is invalid because the second claim is manifestly false.
& of course the fact that the Bible is not exclusively historical narrative
doesn't mean that it contains _no_ historical narrative.
Repetitively,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/