At 08:16 AM 10/1/98 +0100, Gary Collins wrote:
> Genesis 1
>> is often hit hard as being poetry or what ever but that it doesn't
>> represent the real state of affairs. Yet then they turn around and say that
>> Genesis 1:1 is actual history!!!
>
>Genesis 1 cannot IMO be history as we define it today. The idea of the
>firmament at least must be figurative. But this doesn't mean that it
>doesn't describe real events. It gives not so much a description of
>how the Universe came to be how it is, as a revelation of the one who
>created it, and that it was created for him and for his pleasure.
Under certian definition, I could agree with you here. I have often
pointed out that the scientific description of a car wreck is no more true
than the non-scientific.
The scientific description: "The momentum of car A was such that the
frictional force of the tires against the road was unable to dissipate the
energy in the requisite time. Then, the tensile strength of the metal of
the two auto frames was not sufficiently high to avoid implosion of the
bumper"
The non-scientfic description: 'The red car hit the blue car'.
Both are true and both describe a real event. I don't see why this
shouldn't be our goal in apologetics. We don't have to have a scientific
account, but we should demand a true account.
What I object to is the tendency on the part of my more liberal brothers to
allow for the non-scientific(Biblical) description to be so inaccurate as
to be equivalent to allowing the statement "the bird hit the tree" to be an
adequate description of the auto wreck. After all, in the above, something
did hit something and the bird is obviously allegorical to the red car.
I know I won't convince anyone with this (indeed, I will probably make
people mad at me), but that type of contorted logic leaves me wondering why
I should believe anything the Bible says.
glenn
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
Foundation, Fall and Flood
& lots of creation/evolution information
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm