glenn morton wrote:
>
> It is well known that I prefer a concordistic approach to the Scripture.
> This morning while reading the paper I ran into an interesting illustration
> of why concordism is important. It is from an article entitled "Faithful
> not worried about who said what in Columbine slayings" from the Houston
> Chronicle Sund Jan 9, 2000, p. 2A
>
> The article says:
>
> >>>>"Witnesses had said 17-year-old BErnall closed her eyes and clasped her
> hands in prayer when one of the gunmen pointed a shotgun at her and asked
> if she believed in God.
> Yes, she said--and he killed her.
> The story turned Bernall into a martyr who had found God after falling in
> with the wrong crowd, dabbling in the occult and experimenting with drugs.
> But more than eight months after the April 20 shooting attack the picture
> has become muddied.
> Authorities now say it was survivor Valeen Schnurr who professed her
> belief to gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. A similar story has also
> emerged about Rachel Scott, who died.
> Among Christians, however, some say the question is irrelevant.
> 'It doesn't matter who said it or if no one said it,' Evans said. 'But if
> people believe in God, that's what's important.
> Doug Clark, director of field ministries of San Diego-based National
> Network of Youth Ministries, said he encourages other students to follow
> the teen-agers' example of boldness.
> 'Mincing words over what was said in the library is a minor part,' Clark
> said, 'The greater part is how they lived their lives, and it's not going
> to change anything.
> REligious experts said attempts to clarify the confusion surrounding the
> stories of Christian faith actually could help embed the story in religious
> circles.
> 'This rethinking can be chalked up to media scrutiny, which I think the
> faithful would dismiss as a cynical attempt to debunk the story,' said
> Randall Balmer, professor of American religious studies at BArnard College
> 'In some ways, it may make the faithful dig in a little bit deeper and
> resist those attempts.'<<<<
>
> Without a doubt the story has had a tremendous impact on people's lives. I
> don't want to take away from that. But what bothers me is the cavalier
> attitude some have for the truth or falsity of the story itself. Have we
> taken a person who was not a Christian and turned them into a Christian
> martyr? I don't know and at this point only God really knows.
>
> But if this is the standard of truth that we Christians hold to, of what
> value are our statements? Trust is earned because one is trustworthy and
> represents things as they really are. When we don't care about the truth,
> why should anyone trust us?
>
> And this is why I believe that it does matter whether there is any
> historicity in Genesis. Not caring about whether it is 'true' or not is
> very similar to what may be happening with this Columbine story--truth is
> thrown out of the window in order to score quick points for our religion.
> If we do that, what separates us from the lowliest huxter?
> glenn
Certainly claims that certain accounts are historically accurate should be
supportable with historical evidence. In addition, it should be clear that the Bible
contains a good deal of historical material. It is quite another matter, however, to
argue that all biblical texts which have the superficial appearance of historical
narrative must either be historically accurate or at least contain some minimum of
historically accurate material. There are at least 3 basic errors of this type of
concordism.
1) It flies in the face of the internal evidence of Scripture itself with its
differing accounts of the same phenomena (of which Gen.1 & 2 are only the
most prominent) which shows that the goals and standards of the biblical
writers were in many cases very different from those of 19th century
European historians.
2) It assumes that "history as it really happened" is the only way in which
truth - & especially theological truth - can be conveyed, an assumption
which can be reductio ad absurdumed with numerous examples.
3) By focussing so strongly on finding some historical events to which texts
might refer, it can fail to call attention to the real message of the text.
Biblical texts need to be studied without the a priori assumption that they are
all historical narrative. Some, of course, are. & even in those which aren't, there
may be embedded some historical referents. I don't consider it "concordism" in this
sense to point out that Gen.2:10-14 refers to at least a couple of real rivers, or even
to argue that thus all 4 are probably real. It would be another matter to have four
names of rivers which couldn't easily be identified but to assume that they _must_ refer
to rivers which can be identified in present-day geography.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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