Re: Seely's Views 2

Glenn wrote,

> GRm: Unfortunately, Paul, you didn't understand what I was saying. Why
> isn't history left for us to discover for ourselves? Why did we need God to
> inspire a person of 5000 years ago to write a story which accomodated to the
> science of the day and thus didn't tell us the truth?

It isn't written directly for you. You are reading over the shoulders of the
original readers. It was written for them. Something had to form the skeleton
on which the revelation was hung; so God used their science-pre-history. If a
person were writing for people before oxygen was discovered, one would have to
write in terms of phlogiston---even if the writer knew better. If a person
were writing to people before Copernicus, one would have to write in terms of
the sun moving around the earth---even if the writer knew better. Communication
demands meeting people where they are. People are not computers. They are
imbedded in cultural situations. You can't suppose that all there is logic and
reason. God met people where they were. You can't come back on his inspired
authors after science discovers a more accurate view and say, You did not tell the
truth---unless there was intention to straighten out their science.

The intention of Genesis is not to straighten out the Israelites' science or
ours . And the intention is not hard to discern. Why do people read a cook
book? To learn to fly-fish? Why do people read a train time-table? To learn to
paint? The reason people read a document is very probably the reason the writer
wrote it. So why over the past 2000 years have people read the Bible? To
straighten out their understanding of geology? physics? Even when people took Gen
1-11 as VCR history, the purpose of reading even those chapters was not to come
to a truer view of the scientific facts. Read the sermons of the Church
fathers, the Reformers, Wesley, etc. even the ones they preached on Gen 1-11. The
purpose of the sermons was to tell people about God, sin, obedience to God,
salvation. And the fact that the Bible was used for that purpose way way way
ahead of anything else tells you the intention of the Bible writers, which tells
you the intention of God.

P
Received on Sat Aug 28 07:13:48 2004