On Fri, 22 Feb 2002 15:59:53 -0500 Walter Hicks
<wallyshoes@mindspring.com> writes:
> D. F. Siemens, Jr. wrote:
>
> >
> > Dictionaries usually only list terms that have a fairly broad
> usage in
> > the kind of publications that the lexicographers check.
> "Concordism" is
> > used by a small group of people involved in the relationship
> between
> > evangelical exegesis and science. I recall a lexicographer
> specifying
> > that they do not try to include technical cant.
>
> I'm not well enough versed in the vocabulary used often on this
> list.
> Can you suggest a website which might explain the terms -- or I'll
> just
> ask when confused.
>
Wally,
I don't know any way except to ask. At least I've never run across a
list. But this holds generally. For example, one has to depend on context
to know whether PC involves computers or censorship.
>
> > I think I detect an assumption which a friend made explicitly,
> that
> > "inspiration"="inerrancy." This was not in the statement of the
> > Westminster divines (they cannot be accused of accommodating
> Darwin or
> > Kant), who recognized scripture as the inerrant rule of faith and
> > practice, with no mention of facts. The equation seems to have
> sprung as
> > a reaction to the modernists. It led folks, according to a story
> that
> > makes the rounds, to cut out every passage that the liberal
> pastor
> > suggested was not literally true, leaving only a few shreds of
> pages. Not
> > noted by the tellers is that the back of each sheet so assaulted
> was also
> > removed, so the story was quite silly. All scripture is inspired,
> but I
> > do not see a reference to truth in II Timothy 3:16f.
>
> Actually I feel exactly the way you stated. I have never consider
> the
> Bible to be "inerrant" but always considered it to be inspired. I
> recently had turn down a position on the board of directors for a
> Christian Organization for the very reason.
>
I can buy your position. But I think that there is a tendency to insert
some of the recent tradition in evangelical/fundamentalist groups without
realizing it.
>
> > I find it amazing that so many problems are ignored or papered
> over in
> > the gap and day-age theories, let alone creation science/flood
> geology,
> > that have been popular. The only way I know to read the record in
> Genesis
> > 1:1-2:4a and 2:4bff literally is to take the former as a series
> of
> > revelations over 6 days and the latter as a separate revelation,
> neither
> > of which is to be taken as the history of creation.
>
> Again, I was trying to speak only of Genesis chapter one and how, I
> believe , it contains a number of things which I feel are highly
> unlikely to have been stated by someone several thousands of years
> ago.
> I don't think that errors in some aspects or similarity is some
> detail
> negates what is valid.
>
For example here: the Day-Age and YEC views look at Gen. 1, ignoring the
differences with ch. 2. They may, without considering the problems,
arbitrarily say that the events of the latter simply took up part of the
sixth day. They get testy or defensive when one asks how it all gets
jammed into a few hours or the order is not the same. What is there in
ch. 1 that could not have been written either 6 or 15 centuries B.C. when
Israelites or their progenitors were in contact with Babylonians? If one
makes the firmament = unbounded space/atmosphere, then it could not have
been written with Babylonian cosmology in mind. If the waters above the
firmament are clouds, it isn't ancient, but it has become nonsense.
Unless one indulges in the most ridiculous revisionism, there is nothing
in the early chapters of Genesis that could not have been written in
antiquity.
> > >
> > > I don't suggest that the Bible be taken as an infallible book
> that
> > > must
> > > be taken always literally -- but I reject the opposite extreme
> of
> > > rejection of a Biblical chapter out of hand if anybody can can
> find
> > > any
> > > discrepancies with the latest scientific notions.
> > >
> > This only holds if "inspiration"="inerrancy."
>
> Don't understand. I read you as saying that a discrepancy with
> latest
> scientific notions in ANY respect means that one should reject the
> entire chapter. In other words, since the moon and sun are not in
> proper
> historical order then you consider it valid to reject the entire
> chapter
> as invalid. If so, that is my criticism of what is being said. I
> think
> that one note what is correct as well as what is incorrect.
>
Whether you fall under this view or not, it is clearly the view I often
encounter.
>
>
> > > Let me emphacize that I firmly believe in some type of
> evolution. I
> > > do
> > > not accept the Bible as infallible and I am not YEC sandbagger
> --
> > > or
> > > anything like a concordism-monger. I may be a bit to open
> minded
> > > for
> > > this group, I think. (What they say is -- so open minded that
> his
> > > brains
> > > fall out?) ;)
> > >
> > I see a shift here between what you say you believe and the
> implicit
> > assumptions in your arguments.
>
> That is true. Since I don't take a position on many things I am
> likely
> to argue against what i believe to be wrong, regardless of which
> side it
> might be on. It's a personality quirk of a
> "strong" INFP.
>
>
> >
> > > Walt
> > <snip>
> > >
> > I sympathize with your approach, for I've been there. I was slowly
> forced
> > by the evidence from an original YEC and gap position to an OEC
> approach,
> > followed by TE. I also was forced from the fundamentalist view of
> > inspired inerrant total truth to the classical "rule of faith and
> > practice." But I have found no substitute for unconditional trust
> in God,
> > who revealed himself in the incarnate Son.
>
> I second that one, but I'm too wishy washy to fall in most
> categories.
> Mostly a Deist or TE with respect to the physical universe and a
> mystic
> on the rest.
>
> Thanks for the informative response.
>
> Walt
>
What an interesting mix!
Dave
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