VERY good point. Although as a YEC I argue constantly if I have the
temerity to say, "God created the earth in 7 literal days and if you do not
believe that, you are going to hell" then I am taking the place of God and
assuming I know as much as HE does. The serpent tempted Eve by telling
her, "You will be like God, knowing good and evil..."
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own insight.. Pr. 3:5
Ron Chitwood
chitw@flash.net
----------
> From: Lloyd Eby <leby@nova.umuc.edu>
> To: Glenn Morton <grmorton@waymark.net>
> Cc: Jim Bell <JamesScottBell@compuserve.com>; evolution@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Flood and miracles
> Date: Sunday, February 22, 1998 6:51 PM
>
> On Sun, 22 Feb 1998, Glenn Morton wrote:
>
> > I
> > hear this "hermeneutical rules" allow this or don't allow that. I hear
this
> > from both liberal and conservative each arguing that hermeneutical laws
> > require opposite things. I have begun to think that hermeneutical
rules
> > are merely subjective and are used correctly when your interpretation
agrees
> > with mine and used wrongly when your interpretation disagrees with
mine.
> >
> > The reason for this subjectivity is that one must decide what kind of
> > literature a piece is and the author didn't tell you. Secondly, even if
> > something is poetry and normally doesn't relay history, some poems DO
relay
> > history like the poem written by Gordon Lightfoot on the Edmund
Fitzgerald.
> > So, I don't think an appeal to hermeneutical rules is very good because
it
> > is subjective.
>
> I've stayed out of this debate so far because I have nothing to
contribute
> to it. But I can say that, although he overstates things a bit -- it
would
> be hard to argue on any hermeneutical rule or principle that the seventh
> commandment, for example, means "thou shalt commit adultery" -- Glenn is
> exactly correct here about the plasticity of Biblical interpretation.
>
> There's a strong tendency for those committed to a belief or
> interpretation to think and say that their particular interpretation --
> and their corresponding interpretation or hermaneutical rule -- is
> transparent while competing ones are not. This is false.
>
> The deeper problem, for evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, is
that
> they tend to want to turn the Bible into what someone called a "paper
> pope." They do this, I think, because they feel that salvation comes from
> believing and observing the Bible. But that is not so. As Jesus is
> recorded as having remarked on one occasion, "You search the scriptures,
> because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that
> bear witness to me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life."
> (John 5: 39, 40)
>
> I do not recall reading anywhere in the Bible that one has to believe in
> any particular age for the earth or particular mechanism -- whether
> naturalistic or miraculous -- by which the earth and the living things in
> it came into existence in order to have salvation. People who try to read
> this into the Scriptures are, I think, committing a grave error.
>
> Lloyd Eby (Ph.D. in philosophy, and seminary graduate -- although that
> proves nothing.)
>