George Murphy wrote
>I see no point in continuing this thread since Dick apparently has no
>interest in responding to my arguments.
I answered the only question you asked. You then went on to say:
"Dick seems to have totally missed the point here - either that or his
omission of my reference to Genesis shows that he saw it quite clearly!
It's clear that the writer of the Genesis account used the concepts of an
archaic cosmology in order to speak about God's creation of the world. No
sensible person today thinks that that oudated picture of the world has to
be accepted if one is going to believe the theological claims of Genesis.
I.e., those claims are cannot simply be identified with the way in which
the world is described there.
As Christians, we presumably believe that scripture is in some sense
inspired by the Holy Spirit. The example of Genesis 1 shows that the Spirit
seems to have been willing to condescend to the use of less-than-perfect
concepts - & in fact ones that from the standpoint of today's science quite
obsolete - in order to convey God's message to us.
If we are going to use what Paul says in Romans 5 and I Corinthians 15 to
develop a theological anthropology, we will have to at least consider the
possibility that the concept of an historical individual Adam as the single
male ancestor of all humans is also part of a view of the world which we
need no longer accept.
Note that I say "at least consider the possibility." Of course we need to
try to grasp Paul's theological argument before we can decide what is
essential to it and what is simply the language that he uses to express it.
But this can't be done if one doesn't even recognize the difference in
principle."
I don't see a question in there anyplace.
Dick Fischer - The Origins Solution - www.orisol.com
"The answer we should have known about 150 years ago"
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