glenn morton wrote:
....................................
> >
> > I believe that God really did create the heavens and the earth. But it's
> >problematic to call what happened "in the beginning" "history" since it's
> the beginning
> >of time, not something that happened in time. & I have even greater
> difficulty seeing
> >your "Days of proclamation" view as "history" since then Gen.1 happened
> before time.
> >We've discussed this before.
>
> Maybe I didn't fully understand what you were saying last time because this
> sounds a bit new to me. If you limit history only to time, then yes, my
> views are not 'historical'. But I would contend that anything God does is
> outside of time including the crucifixion. Since Christ is described as the
> lamb slain from the foundation of the world, and since he wasn't slain
> twice, it appears that this was either programmed into the universe or is
> something extratemporal. Yes it has a temporal component but if it has
> connections with the foundation of the universe, then is it historical?
At the very least, what may have happened outside the space-time of our
universe is a different type of "history" than the history which includes Caesar,
the Declaration of Independence &c. But I strongly disagree with your statement,
"anything God does is outside of time including the crucifixion." The Incarnation
means precisely that God becomes a participant in the history of the world, subject
to the slings & arrows of temporality - that's part of the Word being "made flesh",
which means humanity in its fragility & vulnerability. God's foreknowledge & election
means that God knows & chooses salvation in Christ "before the foundation of the
world", but it is something which takes place in the space-time-matter world.
> >> BEcause we learn more as time goes on, I am not sure that it is really a
> >> good idea to base the interpretation of scripture solely on the way the
> >> ancients read it. God may have meant one thing but the ancient readers
> >> understood it in another way.
> >
> > Okay, but again see my distinction of levels of interpretation in the
> earlier
> >post. As I said there, what's questionable about a lot of concordism is
> the tendency to
> >give level 4 interpretations (contemporary theology in relation to modern
> science &c) as
> >if they were level 1 (original intent).
>
> I agree with you IF the intent is on the part of the humans. I have a bit
> of difficultly with God not knowing how he created the world. If God's
> intent when he inspired the account was really 6 24 hr days when in fact He
> used the Big Bang and lots of time, it raises the question in my mind of
> what exactly does this God know or is He lying.
God _didn't_ choose to tell us "literally" how the universe, earth, life &c came
into being - there's nothing in the Bible about GUTs, nucleosynthesis, DNA &c. That
doesn't mean God didn't know about such things but it's not the way he chose to describe
creation.
> >> How about the prodigal son which you like so much. It could have happened
> >> but it didn't have to because it does happen all the time.
> >
> > Actually it's the Good Samaritan - & as I recall there's been some struggle
> >about that, with you arguing that it _could_ have happened & that that's
> significant.
>
> My own son was 'prodigal' for a while. This is a common occurrence. But
> Luke 15 is clearly marked in scripture as a parable. So at least the very
> first story-the 100 sheep story is and the others follow on naturally but
> they are not specifically said to be parables but the odds are that they are.
But the Good Samaritan _isn't_ labelled a parable. & I don't want to again
get into a debate about whether it really happened or not because the point is
precisely that it doesn't matter.
> >> But the same things goes for the texts of the scripture. If you do go to
> >> the way the ancients viewed genesis 1-11, they viewed it historically.
> >> Someone told them it was real history. So what applies to the Columbine
> >> example applies equally well to the ancients. They shouldn't have been
> >> spouting what everyone thought was real history when it was really fantasy.
> >> And if we can't trust the ancient writers not to do this sort of thing, can
> >> we trust what they say about salvation etc?
> >
> > 1) If the original authors may not have known the real message the Holy
> Spirit
> >intended for a text, as you argued earlier, _a fortiori_ their audiences
> didn't either.
>
> Agreed. And this raises an interesting conundrum. This seems to be a place
> where all options turn out to be loosers. If God's intent was what
> tradition says it was, then there are problem like: Why wasn't the account
> at least in outline more clearly evolutionary and old earth? And if one
> goes my direction then the problem is: Why was God's inspiration so poor
> at getting across to the inspired what he might or might not have meant? If
> one posutlates that there was no inspiration, then the lack of match with
> reality can easily be understood. If there was inspiration, then one has to
> wonder on the one hand how truthful it was and on the other how it worked
> and how fidelitous it was.
Or - God's intent was to tell us about his relationship with the world
in such a way as to encourage us to make him our ultimate concern & to value the
world as our penultimate concern. & as part of that penultimate valuation God wanted
us to understand the world - but to learn about it ourselves & not just be given all
the answers. Maybe.
> > 2) As I pointed out previously, it's clear that the intentions of the
> biblical
> >writers & redactors were quite different from that of "history as it
> really happened"
> >historiography - which doesn't mean that they were _never_ interested in
> writing that
> >type of history.
>
> But, the problem with this is that we should not really be interested in
> the intentions of the writers. They were human and not divine. They could
> lie, they could confabulate wonderful fantasies, like apparently is
> happening at Columbine or what happens with the Missing Day story that
> floats around from time to time.
If we don't start with some anchoring in what the human writers intended
then we open up texts to all sorts of guesses about what the text "really" means
and start reading into it our own meanings - which we will of course think are what
God really meant. Inspiration means that God used the writers in their totality -
not just their hands but their minds, imaginations, understandings of the world with
their limitations &c. We might wish that God had communicated everything to us in
Reviews of Modern Physics style prose but he didn't. If God chose to use liturgy,
fiction, myth & metaphor in addition to historical narrative to convey what he wanted to
then it's our job to learn to understand & appreciate those forms in their proper
places, not turn them into something else.
> What we should be interested in is GOD's intent, not man's. And if the
> writers were able to totally mess up God's message to the ages ever
> afterward, then what is the good of inspiration?
God's choosing to use writers with their limitations is part of the same
package as "the Word was made flesh" on which I commented at the beginning.
> Obviously I don't have good answers for these questions. But I do know that
> a lot of bad things are avoided by having Genesis be a true but simplified
> real account.
I agree that Genesis is true account_s_ & in a sense is simplified - but it
is not a simplified version of a modern scientific account - i.e., the sort of thing
I'd do if asked to give a talk on cosmology to a 5th grade class.
> >So your distinction isn't clear. You defended the historicity
> >of Jonah rather vigorously, which seems to me neither necessary nor very
> plausible.
>
> No it isn't clear. BUt then I haven't seen one yet that is including yours.
> It seems that there is a tendency on the part of some like you to ignore
> the possibility that Jonah might really have happened but was totally
> miraculous.
Agreed, there usually aren't clear-cut signs that scream "fiction" or "genuine
history" when one first looks at a text. The question with Jonah really has nothing
to do with the miraculous - the fish part is just a way of getting him from point A to
point B. But both literary evidence (the extreme hyperbole at numerous points in the
story) and historical evidence (not a hint of the complete conversion of the capital
of the Assyrian empire in Jonah's time) suggest that we're dealing with fiction - &
brilliantly done fiction which doesn't just "teach theology" but grabs hold of the
reader & pulls him or her right into the middle of a live theological question.
Unfortunately most readers don't let themselves get involved in that way because they
get hung up on the fish.
> In that case, we could believe it and wouldn't have to explain
> it. When you make it non-real I don't see what is done except a loss of
> Biblical credibility. You believe God created the heavens and the earth
> but not in the way it was described. That seems inconsistent. The evidence
> that God created the heavens and the earth must lie precisely in that he
> gave a true but simplified account of it. Kinda like a bank who asks for
> your social security number and place of birth, the proof of who created
> lies in the deliverance of a true account. Anything less becomes mere fideism.
If it's "mere fideism" to say "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator
of heaven and earth" rather than "I have evidence that ..." then I plead guilty. But I
wouldn't call it that - it is faith in search of understanding. Again I'd refer to
my paper from last summer's ASA meeting which I think I sent you.
> >> > You're missing the forest for the trees - or the landscape for
> the rivers.
> >> >I agree that there _may_ be accurate geographical information in the text,
> >> & that it's
> >> >worth exploring that possibility. In Gen.2 it's clear that there is.
> >> What I reject is
> >> >the claim that there _must_ be accurate geographical information there.
> >>
> >> I like rivers and trees. :-) Because it is the details that matter. Only if
> >> the details are correct can the landscape and forest really be there.
> >
> > The rivers in Gen.2 help make the point that the text is about the creation
> >of the real world - but so is Gen.1 (I know, I know!) & there aren't any
> names there.
>
> But if the information can be inaccurate as you suggest above, why should
> we trust anything else about the account? Why should be beleive that it is
> accurate that Jehovah created the heavens and the earth yet he can't help
> you find your way home because he can't give accurate geographic
> information? This bothers me a lot that God can't ensure the delivery of
> good information to us.
Sometimes it bothers me that God doesn't ensure the delivery of the money,
leisure time, health of loved ones, world peace &c that I'd like. Maybe God expects
me to have something to do with bringing those things about. Maybe God wants us to
get some information ourselves.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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