>The following are comments made by Pete Powers, a member of our church
>forum. Pete has a recently received PhD in English, from Duke University,
>and is currently teaching at George Mason University. With a bit of
>unease, he welcomes comments from folks on the reflector (which I will
>pass along to him). In this regard, he writes:
>
> "Sure, of course, I expect to be crucified, but that's Ok."
Nah, we don't crucify people -- usually.
>
>Pete's comments follow:
>
>>> I'm not a scientist and generally view these arguments with some sense
>that I am glad someone else is concerned about it. The thing that keeps
>cropping up in these various postings that I am interested in is the
>notion of "the language of appearances" as if this somehow explained what
>was going on in Biblical discourse as opposed to scientific discourse.
>The problem with it, as I see it, is that the assumption seems to be that
>scientific discourse is not also a "language of appearances," as if
>somehow science can deliver to us the way things "really" are.
The term "language of appearances" bothers me because of the connotation of
the word "appearances" -- that maybe what is being reported is not real, as
you say. Still, It think it's fair to say that when biblical writings
touch on cosmology, the writer may be using what I call "observer
language". That is he's trying to report what he sees in language that
conveys as clearly as possible what he's talking about. The writer may or
may not be ignorant about the arrangement of the solar system. We don't
know because that's not the subject. Technical reports from government
agencies like NIST use terms like "sunrise" and "sunset" and no one wonders
whether NIST is stuck in geocentrism. That's not the subject. NIST just
wants to tabulate sunrise and sunset times for those who need to know them.
The notion that science can tell us how things "really are" is myopic and
dangerous. Science can tell us a great deal about the natural causes of
natural phenomena, but that doesn't tell us anything about ultimate
purpose.
>
[more interesting discussion snipped]
>As I said, I don't worry about these issues too much in a concrete way,
>but I do think the notion that the scriptures are using a more
>metaphorical and somehow less objective language will always be
>problematic since it lets the scientist assume that he has arrived at a
>truth without metaphor. This assumption is, I think, probably one of the
>metaphysical bases of idolatry.
>
It seems to me that we need to apply the methods we apply to any literature
to read Scripture and determine how the message is being presented. Most
of us took literature courses in high school and our teachers labored
mightily to help us learn to dig the messages out of sonnets, stories,
plays, etc. While I'm not suggesting that the Bible is full of allegory (I
don't believe it is), still we need to use some of the literature skills we
should have learned many years ago to try to discern what the writer wants
to communicate. I'm not troubled by that fact that metaphorical language
is sometimes used in Scripture -- so long as readers are concentrating on
understanding what is being communicated instead of reading their own
preferences into their interpretation. We can guard against that by
comparing the pasage we want to exegete with other Scripture, by reading
the context instead of just lifting proof texts, and most of all by relying
on Jesus' promise that the Holy Spirit would lead us into all truth.
As I said earlier, I totally agree that the notion that the scientist can
arrive at truth without metaphor is dangerous, and probably is indeed "one
of the
metaphysical bases of idolatry."
Nice post.
Bill Hamilton | Vehicle Systems Research
GM R&D Center | Warren, MI 48090-9055
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX)