Where in the Bible does it tell us that the Bible teaches us science. It
uses the common language of the day to explain things in an everyday way. I
remember Francis Schaeffer explianing this to some at L'Abri way back in
1971.
The best comment on all this is found in Calvin's commentary on Genesis
where Clavin tells those who seek Astronomy and other recondite arts to go
elsewhere and that Moses wrote in every day language and accomodated himself
to our babytalk so that the rude and uneducated could understand.
I have to say I get exasperated with the misreading of Holy Scripture by
Runge and V Jenkins and consider that they trivialise God's Word with their
odd arguments.
I would also ask them to consider whether they do not do as much damage to
the Gospel as the likes of Bishop Spong.
I may add that today I preached on Genesis and Creation in relation to the
genome project to a congregation who were largely ignorant of science. From
responses it helped some.
We need to ask exactly what the Bible teaches and not regard it as a source
of scientific information.
Yours very worried and concerned
Michael Roberts
----- Original Message -----
From: "george murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 11, 2001 5:01 PM
Subject: genetics & textual variants
> In teaching a class on genetics-related issues I wanted to
> contrast the old & incorrect "mixing of bloods" view of heredity with
> the Mendelian model, and the phrase "[God] hath made of one blood all
> nations of men" from Acts 17:26 KJV came to mind. Those committed to
> the idea that the Bible always teaches accurate science might have some
> scrambling to do here, while those who recognize that biblical language
> is accomodated to the scientific knowledge of its time would see here
> just another example of that.
> HOWEVER on looking more closely at this one finds that the mss
> vary. The text adopted by the UBS Greek text, followed by RSV, says
> simply "from one (_ex henos_) every nation". Other mss have "from one
> blood (_ex henos himatos_)". While the earlier mss (including
> Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus & Vaticanus) have the shorter reading, the
> Latin text of Irenaeus (e.g.) has the longer. UBS gives "from one" a
> "very high degree of doubt" rating: All other things being equal, the
> shorter of two readings is generally to be adopted.
> Just thought you might want to know ...
>
> George
>
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Feb 11 2001 - 17:48:05 EST