I think Burgy has a really good point. In all my
years of teaching, I always told students I don't care
at the end of the day what you think about a
particular issue, but I do care that you know why the
other guy disagrees with you and have thought about
why you hold to your position despite her disagreement
with you. This is important.
The other point that Burgy makes that I am trying to
make is it is not a salvation issue.
I think we have a uniquely protestant problem here, in
some ways, due to the primacy of "rationality" in a
protestant world view, when there are different
definitions of rationality and what it means to look
at something objectively.
The more I learn about Orthodox theology the more
wisdom I see in the view of some things as mysteries.
This is not merely a dogmatic side step to avoid
dispute, but recognizes the fact that are models are
partial and imperfect. For example, the sacraments,
including the Eucharist are a mysterion -- from which
we derive the English word mystery. The Orthodox for
example avoided the whole tansubstantiation,
consubstantiation, merely symbolic, lets toss them out
division over the Eucharist that separates Catholics,
Lutherans, other protestants and anabaptists. I think
there is wisdom in this. While saying that the bread
and wine are the body and blood they do not hold to a
rationalistic account of what the Eucharist is.
Quite simply, it seems to me, that God is a mystery
that has been in part revealed to us. We should never
be too certain that we understand very much about that
mystery. At the end of the day, systematic theologies
try to draw too tight a constraining ring around God,
whom I do not believe is subject rigorously to our
propositional logic.
Hence, even if one believes in the Fall literally, one
does not need to believe in hardline Original Sin and
if one believes in hardline Original Sin, one does not
have to believe unbaptized babies burn in Hell for
eternity. Such "rigorous" propositional logic
conclusions are inapposite to God.
A corrolary of this, to me, is that literal
interpretation of scriptures, especially as relates to
parts of the OT, are less and less likely to be
necessary.
Like the Eucharist, Creation is a mystery which can
only be partially illuminated by modern science.
After all, as any honest physicist points out, we can
only really go so far back to the beginning of the Big
Bang before it becomes speculative in the extreme and
many of the competing cosmologies are metaphysical and
really unverifiable in a rigorous sense (many worlds
of quantum cosmology, phoenix universes, black hole
universes, string theory, etc., etc.). Regardless of
which of these may be true, Genesis stands for the
proposition that God is the Creator of whatever
ensemble of or single universe(s) we have.
--- JW Burgeson <hoss_radbourne@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Walt said: "I cannot accept the myth, allegory,
> theology story. Sorry guys."
> No need to be sorry, and no need to accept something
> you don't believe in.
> This stuff is not either a salvation issue or a
> "what rewards we will get in
> heaven" issue.
>
> I suggest, however, that if you reject the "genesis
> 1-11 is myth" arguments,
> it is incumbent on you to study them until you can
> uderstand the arguments
> as well as -- or better than -- those who espouse
> it. If it were a far out
> minority opinion, such a study could fairly be
> ignored. It is not, and it
> cannot.
>
> Burgy
>
>
>
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