Okay, I'll bite briefly, merely to try to once more
dispel the either/or demand.
--- Glenn Morton <glenn.morton@btinternet.com> wrote:
> Moorad wrote:
>
> >Does anyone take seriously any claims made in the
> Book of Mormons
> >regarding historical or archeological events?
> Moorad
>
> I waited a day to see if anyone would stand up for
> this book. It appears
> that everyone believes it is historically and
> archaeologically false.
> Therefore, it must teach great truths about God and
> his dealings with
> people. That is my one-liner for today.
I don't think anyone has said this.
I agree with you more than you might want to admit,
but you sort of read around those points and caveats
in my posts.
My point has been and continues to be that particular
details in some books of the Bible are not dispositive
of the truth of the Christian message. There are lots
of theologians, rightly or wrongly, who find the Old
Testament important only because it was scripture to
those who composed the early Church, including Jesus.
I do not belong to that camp, although by the same
token I do not hold that were large chunks of the OT
demonstrably false that that would invalidate per se
the New Testament witness to the life and resurrection
of Jesus.
I completely agree that if a book, which purports to
be a unitary book and make truth claims about
something is demonstrably false, then that would
undermine the entire contents of the book. (Gasp,
surprise). I have not studied the Book of Mormon, but
if they have the history and archaeology of
pre-Columban America wrong, that would be a serious
blow to the claims of the rest of the book.
However, my points about the Bible and Concordism are
of a different variety. If I were to try to formulate
a principle of verification it would be that of
multiple measures and indicators or triangulation if
you will to assess the veracity of something. This
leans more to social science methodology that deals
with messier things than the hard sciences, like human
behavior. I think religion falls into this category.
I eschew using only one measure to try to assess
something simply because I don't think any one of our
particular measures are very good. Therefore, you
look for correlations between your multiple indicators
to see if things add up. I could formulate it more at
length, but that is the general gist.
My main points continue to be:
1) There is no basis for considering that Genesis 1
was written as a scientific document, so treating it
as such runs a danger of assuming too much or too
little.
2) The New Testament witness to Jesus is of
predominant importance to the Christian faith.
3) If some parts of the Old Testament are
demonstrably false (and I have never said that I think
they are), that does not mean that Christianity or the
Christian conception of God is false.
4) The unique revelation of Christ as discussed in
the New Testament introduces some very new ideas about
God that on their face seem to go against what some
Old Testament prophets believed God to be, e.g., a
suffering Messiah (anticipated primarily by Isaiah),
rather than a conquering Messiah. I do not see that
this makes those parts of the Old Testament that
predict a conquering Messiah wrong, merely partial or
incomplete.
5) There is no such thing as a literal meaning to any
of the texts we have -- without succumbing to
post-modernism -- the point is well taken that
depending on how you approach certain texts, you will
get different answers. This is simply how language
works and how people form meanings from language.
6) The Bible, as an historical witness of God by many
people, is a compilation of a variety of multiple
indicators from a variety of very different
philosophical perspectives. Ecclesiastes is
practically nihilistic. Other parts are triumphalist,
etc. There is something to be gleaned from God viewed
through these different human lenses on the nature of
life and God's outworking in history. All the
descriptions of God do not have to be and indeed,
should not necessarily be, interpreted through the
same exegetical lens.
7) For all the foregoing reasons, the Bible cannot be
treated as a unitary document, as it is a cannonical
assemblage of texts by the Church.
What is illogical is to require one particular
criterion or set of criteria to judge the veracity of
a religious tradition. With something so complex, the
question is one of multiple indicators.
> Have a nice day. I won't respond cause I want
people
> to merely think about
> the above illogic as applied to other religious
> books.
>
> glenn
>
> see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
> for lots of creation/evolution information
> anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
> personal stories of struggle
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