At 08:23 AM 1/11/00 -0500, George Murphy wrote:
> 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.
What I have, as always objected to, was the situation in which the universe
came into being in one way but the description which was inspired by God
was totally different. That is like going to buy a car and being told that
you will get a beautiful blue Crown Vic with whitewalls, stereo/CD player
and automatic seats. When you go to pick up the car you find a red Yugo
with no tires, a walkman and one of those old piano seats that you could
rotate to raise or lower it. It always strikes me as a bit of a bait and
switch routine if God can't tell us what actually happend.
I wrote:
>> 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.
Then if that is what he wanted, He should have left most of the nonsensical
events out of the inspiration!
>> 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.
Isn't that what we are really doing when we say 'The real purpose of of
Genesis is to differentiate Judaism from the earth and sky worshipping
peoples around them and thus Genesis doesn't have to fit science? After
all, the Bible never clearly says that that was the purpose of Genesis! It
is merely a guess on the part of the interpretors. It also never clearly
says, "This part is not to be taken historically" which also means that
that we are really reading our own meanings into the Bible. I don't
completely see a way to avoid that no matter what the intepretation is.
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.
I would note that since the above statement is not actually stated in the
Bible, that you are reading your meaning into the process of inspiration.
While I agree with what you said, it must surely be acknoweldged that this
is also an example of seeing what we want to see.
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.
Once again the Bible clearly doesn't explain precisely how exegesis is to
take place. We impose our own form on intepretation. Thus I would merely
point out, that the best one can do with any interpretation is to be
internally consistent. No one can avoid seeing what they want to see.
>
>> 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.
See above.
>
>> 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.
But see, if you walked in to that 5th grade class to teach cosmology and
read Genesis 1 and then concluded with: "This is how God created the
world," would you think you had given them the truth? So why is it that we
should feel that God has given us the truth if it doesn't fit the facts?
That is why I take the interpretaional approach that I do. I avoid such
problems.
>
>> >So your distinction isn't clear. You defended the historicity
>> >of Jonah rather vigorously, which seems to me neither necessary nor very
>> plausible.
>> > 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.
But that doesn't address the real issue I am raising which is, why can't
God tell the truth? You feel that God tells the truth in Genesis 1 when the
ancients wrote it, but I doubt seriously you would feel the same if a YEC
came into the class and read Genesis 1 and said that was how God created
the world. We can't have one standard for God(a lower one) and another for
us(a higher one).
You can have the last word. I will be busy the next few days with my son's
marriage to a wonderful young woman. They are both very mission minded and
he will attend cemetary, I mean seminary the next couple of years or so.
I have enjoyed it as always.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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