>According to Jesus (Matt 19:8/Mark 10:5) God did make concessions in
>Scripture to man-and that in the realm of faith and morals. But, the
>rationalistic philosophy that informs and underlies the doctrine of the
>absolute inerrancy of Scripture would agree with you that once God makes a
>concession, "there is no legitimate end to it." The question is: Which is
>ultimate for you, the teaching of Jesus or the demands of human Reason for a
>rationally coherent philosophical system which must rationalize away some of
>his teachings in order to remain intact?
I disagree that that is the question for me or anyone. The question is do
we worship a God who concedes things to sinful man, who is logically
inconsistent, and maybe morally capricious in his concessions to sinful man?
And as to God making the concessions to the sinful desires for divorce, I
don't see Matthew 19:8 saying that God made that concession. Jesus clearly
says it was Moses. Since when is Moses God? And in Mark 10:5, Jesus clearly
says it was Moses who wrote the law. Maybe it wasn't God who made the
concessions you say He made after all! Maybe it was Moses--which is what
the Scripture says.
>I already answered these question too; but, I will say it slightly
>differently: My consistency is not the consistency of a rationalistic
>idealistic philosophical system. I believe in empirical data, not building
>great rationally coherent systems that float above the real world. My
>consistency is that I am willing to apply historical criticism to all the
>historical books of the Bible. When I do, the gospels do not suffer
>historical demise the way Genesis 1-11 does because the gospels as history
>qua history are based on eye-witnesses, whereas Gen 1-11 as history qua
>history is based on ancient Mesopotamian traditions. There is a world of
>difference between those two sources.
So we believe the humans of the 1st century, but we don't beleive the
humans, Noah, Shem, Ham and Japeth of an earlier century. This is
inconsistent. And I do believe that Noah and sons were eye-witnesses to the
events they or their descendants described. I think you are merely
accepting the eye-witness testimony of those you want to believe, but
rejecting those you don't.
And if we must only accept eye-witness testimony but not traditions passed
down from others, then throw out Mark and Luke, and Paul must go also.
These 3 crucial figures never saw any of the events which are so crucial to
christianity. You treat the OT different from the NT epistemalogically
speaking.
>
><<Your response really didn't answer the question of what it means to be
>inspired. If God doesn't correct science and doesn't correct history
>(except corrections where the resurrection is concerned) then what do we
>get from inspiration?>>
>
>I answered this question too. I will only add that the word "inspiration"
is
>only used one time in the Bible: II Tim 3:16. I have already shown in my
>book that none of the classic proof texts prove that divine inspiration
>implies the revealing or correcting of science; so, my question would be
What
>proof do you have that inspiration includes the revealing and correcting of
>science and history and that you are not just accepting a man-made
definition
>of inspiration because it meets your desire to have a coherent rationalistic
>philosophical system?
Once again, you avoid the question. You have never answered it.
Here is your previous 'answer' to that question.
>Note: I did not say or even imply that _all_ we have is human sources. I
>said the history qua history and science qua science in the Bible make no
>biblical claim to be revealed. As to where is the 'Divine'? Rather than
>answer your question abstractly, let's take Gen 1:7, "And God made the
>firmament and separated the waters which were below from the waters which
>were above the firmament and it was so." Since outside of fundamentalist
>circles with their egregious rationalizations, the meaning of the word
>"firmament" is a rock-solid dome over the earth, we have in this verse an
>egregious scientific error to which God has made concession.
All you say is that God made a concession. You don't tell us what
inspiration IS.
Above, in today's post, you merely ask me a question and tell us what
inspiration is NOT. Tell us what it IS. Tell me where in your system of
thought does God come into the process of inspiration. Does your comment
that it only appears once imply that it really isn't inspired? Does the
fact that we are told only once mean it isn't true? Tell me what it means
to be inspired.
>
>Many so-called conservative evangelicals have an ultimate commitment to an a
>priori rationalistic philosophy which demands that the Bible be historically
>and scientifically inerrant. If there is even one error, they say, you
>cannot trust anything. This is Rationalism. Many atheists have that same
>commitment.
So are we to have a committment to irrationalism? THis is an either or
proposition. One is either rational or not. Ones views are either rational
or not. I prefer rationality. And so do you because you try to use logic.
If you really believed what you are complaining about(rationality) you
would cease using logic to defend your viewpoint. But since you are
rational and believe in rationality, you use logic but then use rational
logic to denigrate rationality.
Christians who have that commitment sustain it by rationalizing
>away not only the empirical data which falsifies it, but the teachings of
>Jesus as well. This a priori philosophical commitment functions as an
>intellectual graven image which subordinates both the real Bible and Jesus
>Christ to it.
Once again, are we to have a committment to irrationalism? When you
denigrate rationalism you must seriously consider what the alternatives to
rationalism are. The only alternative I can think of is irrationality. That
seems to be something that I don't want to have. Maybe it works for you,
but not for me.
>When some Christians ostensibly move from Christianity to
>atheism, the reality is that they have fundamentally not moved at all, but
>only exchanged a right wing form of their commitment to rationalism for a
>left wing form. The ultimate commitment is the same. The antidote to both
>forms of idolatry is to make an ultimate commitment to Jesus. Trust Him.
>And that brings me to Bill Hamilton's and George Andrews' posts which I
>really think are of the essence.
Then evidence and logic means nothing. We can believe what we want. YECs
can believe what they want and thus the YECs are correct. That is what
simply believe means. They trust Jesus. They trust his Word. They are very
devout. They have an ultimate commitment to Jesus. (and if you say they
don't, then you really don't know them at all). They are very Christian.
They are not moved by any rationalistic concerns. But they are very, very
very wrong.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution