As a scientist, we have to believe in propositional truth. If there is no
propositional truth then all our knowledge is out the window. Thus, when the
Scripture says, In beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," there
is no middle ground. Either God created it or God didn't. Thus it has to be
either historically true, or historically false. Thus, if your "clean"
hermeneutics, leads you to believe that there is no literal history in
Genesis 1:1 as you said a couple of days ago, then propositionally we have a
problem. Propositionally that would mean that God is NOT the creator of the
universe. If He did not create the universe then He is not the Creator. So
what is He?
The only out I can see for your position is to say that the author of Genesis
1:1 didn't mean that, historically speaking, God created the universe even
though he wrote that he did. It just so happens, by coincidence, that God did
create the world, unknown to the Genesis writer. This would allow the writer
to imbue the first verse with no historicity, and at the same time allow the
verse to be propositionally true.
If I am forced to this type of a contortion, I would find it hard to believe
that Genesis is the record of God.
You wrote:
>>Awaiting for a blast from my directly southern neighbor.<<
Is this good enough? :-)
hermetically (oops, hermeneutically) yours
glenn