Re: Fable telling

Bill Hamilton (hamilton@predator.cs.gmr.com)
Thu, 21 Oct 1999 17:19:37 -0400

Glenn responded to my comments by stating his view that God is a God of
truth. I agree with Glenn. Let me be very clear that I do not consider
early Genesis to be fable or myth. However, neither do I believe that it's
what someone on this or the evolution list called "VCR history" a while ago
(i. e. a complete chronology that is free of the viewpoints of the original
writers) Nor do I believe that God lies. However, I do believe that He
abbreviates, summarizes and either uses or allows His writers to use
fanciful language. especially in Early Genesis I suspect a great deal of
abbreviation and summarization is going on. As well, we have to remember
that the narration style of ancient Hebrews differs from ours. I don't
feel qualified to address the issue of the role of allegory, hyperbole,
poetry and other nonliteral writing devices, except to say that their
presence in a text doesn't make the text untruthful. It just means we have
to give due attention to the writing style. And we have to give due
attention to the culture the writer is coming from, since the nonliteral
writing styles of other cultures could easily be misinterpreted by 2oth
century western readers. But the issue of omissions is a great deal easier
to address, so I will. Here are just a few passages that make it clear
that God doesn't always tell us everything He knows about a subject
interesting to us:

John 16:12: "I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear
them now"
Matt 19:8: "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts
were hard..."

II Cor 12:2-4: "I know a man who fourteen years ago was caught up to the
third heaven... He heard inexpressible things, things that man is not
permitted to tell."

Rev 10:4: "And when the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write; but I
heard a voice from heaven say, "seal up what the seven thunders have said
and do not write it down."

So God may omit something from His communication to us because we're not
ready for it, because our hearts are hard and won't permit us to listen,
because we won't understand, or simply because the time to reveal it hasn't
arrived. Still another reason might be that the information is just not
relevant to what God wants to teach in Scripture.

At 08:27 PM 10/19/99 +0000, mortongr@flash.net wrote:
>My view is that God is a God of truth. If He doesn't tell the truth about
>things, then how do I know that He is telling the truth about the way of
>salvation? I have no satisfactory answer to that question
>
> For my part I would say that it
>>shouldn't matter if the account of an occurrence in Genesis takes some
>>poetic license to make a point. After all, the author is God, whose
>>decision on whether straight fact or some form of poetry or drama to is the
>>most effective teaching tool is infallible. And II Tim 3:16 applies in
>>either case. Secondly, I don't think the issue is what God _could easily_
>>do. After all, He can do anything that doesn't violate His nature.
>
>And my concern is that God does violate his nature by telling us false
>things about nature, in spite of our collective willingness to forgive God
>for this unfortunate habit of His.
>

Bill Hamilton
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
Staff Research Engineer
Electrical and Controls Integration MC 480-106-390
GM R&D Center
30500 Mound Road
Warren, MI
hamilton@predator.cs.gmr.com / whamilto@mich.com (home)