A Pastor's Journey

Faith & Science Conversation
55

“Specifically called out as optional where” in the New Testament.
First you would have to prove that any of God’s commandments are “optional”.
Then you would have to provide a “Thus sayeth the Lord” where God says, “You know that day I created and called my own, in the Old Testament? Well, I changed my mind.”
Then, you would need to provide an answer as to why God tells us that in the Earth made new, God tell us that we were going to come to worship Him from one Sabbath to another" Isaiah 6:23

Where in any of the verses mentioned in your post, has God telling us His people, grafted into the family of God, that His Sabbath can be profaned?

Remember that God’s Word can not be used to contradict His Word. If there is a discrepancy found, it is because of our understanding, which must be changed.

So if you believe that God tells us to keep His Sabbath in one place, a commandment for which those who broke it could have been put to death, (the wages of sin), and then someone says "God didn’t mean that. He changed His Law. Setting one of His commandments aside, even though He said (heaven and earth would pass, before my Word changes.), Even though He says that (if you break one, you break all), (Even though, we don’t find any direct commands that would counter a direct command),
Where would you be getting this understanding from?

How does God telling us, “that He is Lord of what He created, the Sabbath”, telling us that we can now break His Law? My understanding is that God was telling those who were trying to tell Him how to keep His own law, that He knew how to keep His own law.

And if what you are suggesting is true, would it not have been in effect from the time the Sabbath was created? If God making the Sabbath for man, way back then, meant that man can do as they please with His Sabbath, then why did God bother to include “keeping the Sabbath holy” as one of His commandments?

When you go to a brother or sister, fallen in a particular sin, are you going to quote the whole of God’s commandments to explain that their particular sin is causing them to be lost?
No. You present that sin.

So today, there are many who do not know that they are in danger of being lost. If they know of God’s commandment and yet refuse to honor Him by keeping it, Isaiah 58:13-14; Exodus 3:clock5:

Christ did not break His Sabbath. He demonstrated how it was meant to be kept. He demonstrated that the Sabbath was meant to do good on. No work, yes. No finding our own pleasure, yes. But to not do good on, No.

56

But Christ did break the interpretation of the Sabbath held at that time. It does get sticky when we start looking at what keeping the Sabbath means.
The group I was with stayed at a hotel catering to the ultra Orthodox while in Israel the past week over the Sabbath, and it was interesting. We had to pay our bills before sundown as no transactions could be done the next morning when we left, and it was interesting seeing the families together.
It gave me a new appreciation for Sabbath keeping. We will see if that leads to a change in my behavior.

1 Like
57

We have a collection of resources and articles for pastors, I hope you can find them some comfort and assistance.

3 Likes
58

Jewish boundary markers like sabbath, circumcision and kosher food laws are a big deal in the New Testament church - will Gentiles who come in have to keep these boundary markers to be “real Christians”? The answer is no, they do not.

One man considers one day scared, another considers every day alike.

Buy and eat anything sold in the marketplace without raising an issue of conscience for “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”

Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision mean anything; what counts is allegiance (pistis) to Jesus.

What goes into a man cannot defile him, for it passes out of him. By this Jesus declared all foods clean.

Are we reading the same New Testament? :slight_smile: And yes, I’ve read all the SDA interpretations of these verses, and they are, in my opinion, eisegetical.

Or try reading Galatians if you want to see what Paul thinks about communities of Gentile Christians binding themselves to Jewish boundary markers.

6 Likes
60

This is what keeping the Sabbath was when God told them about the Sabbath in the beginning. But keeping the Sabbath does not change our behavior. Keeping the Sabbath is a result of our behavior being changed after we have allowed Christ to change our nature from the old or natural worldly one, to that of the one given to us when Christ changes our hearts from stone to flesh.
But you are right to participate in the worship of God on the Sabbath, is an experience that will only be surpassed when we worship God that first time in the earth made new.

61

2 posts were split to a new topic: Gerald presents the evidence for a worldwide flood

63

Flood geology, a basic argument of young earth creationism, has an interesting history. In 1874, Seventh-Day Adventist prophet Ellen G. White (1827-1915) had a vision which, she claimed, revealed the true impact on the earth’s geology of Noah’s flood. Fossil evidence found today, White argued, is the result of the flood. Following White, another Adventist, Canadian-born, self-taught geologist George McCready Price (1870-1963) popularized White’s claims. Price spent the majority of his adult life promoting White’s speculations. Largely due to Price’s zeal, the so-called gap theory, which had been the dominant theory with regard to the age of the earth among evangelicals, was quickly replaced. The Gap Theory proposed that the days of creation were literal 24-hour days, with a time gap of unknown length between two separate creations, recorded in Genesis 1:1, and Genesis 1:2-31. Flood geology was popularized by Henry Morris (1918-2006) and John Whitcomb in their 1961 book, The Genesis Flood, hugely influential among evangelicals.

1 Like
64

This is my first comment on Biologos. I will probably add several more to the discussion but first simply compliment this site on its intention to foster respectful dialogue.

Eventually I want to get back to Moderator Laura’s suggestion (near the beginning) that “clergy are tasked with … exposing false and dangerous ideas.” But for now my comment is Wow! This discussion covers a lot a territory, but It seems that behind much of it are the significant issues and challenges of biblical interpretation and scientific theory development.

Having adopted the stance expressed by NT Wright on the BioLogos front page that “God’s world and God’s word go together in a rich, living harmony”, I was never really troubled by apparent conflicts between biblical accounts and observations made in the natural sciences because I always assumed that such conflicts were only apparent.

So I haven’t been much engaged or interested in this particular controversy since the early 70’s. At that time (creationist) scientists such as Dr. Duane Gish and Dr Margaret Helder, were raising questions about evidence that did not seem to fit the Theory of Evolution. Their questions seemed worthy of response from evolution theorists but I am not sure whether such responses were ever forth coming. I was happy to leave the resolution of such conflicts to those more knowledgeable in their fields than I, perhaps naively assuming that both sides would recognize the contingent provisional nature of all human knowledge. Both ways of knowing depend on interpretations of relevant evidence to provide plausible explanations for as much data as possible. The most likely source of disagreements and misunderstandings seem to be the biases or presuppositions of the interpreters.

In that regard I have no trouble asserting that absolutely everything that God intends to communicate to us through the scriptures is by definition not only completely inerrant, infallible and authoritative but it will produce at minimum at least what the LORD intends (Isaiah 55:10-11).

What is not apparent is how much controversy the word of the LORD may also produce among those who disagree about, or fail to discern, the exact purposes to which the LORD sends his word. This may especially true of us if we don’t take the preceding 2 verses (Isaiah 55:8-9 along with 1 Cor 13:9 ) to heart and thus humbly accept that we might not know completely and precisely everything that the LORD does intend to communicate and accomplish through that word.

Therefore I also have no trouble asserting that we are in grave danger if we think that from time to time our finite limited imperfect comprehension of the revelation of God in the scriptures also qualifies to be touted as completely inerrant, infallible and authoritative. All truth is God’s truth but not every idea claiming biblical authority qualifies, and of course neither does every scientific theory or hypotheses.

Repenting of our temptation to pretensions to certainty may cheer us up considerably. I think we will learn a lot more from one another if we dial-down our defensiveness and dial-up our curiosity.

3 Likes
65

I was fooled by Morris and Whitcombs and many other Christians teaching YEC nonsense. I’m learning now that the idea of Noah’s flood being the explanation for all we see in geology was abandoned by Christian geologists even before Darwin because the evidence kept piling up against it. They tried to make the flood model work, but it just didn’t.
Gerald bringing up fossils on top of mountains as evidence that the flood model is true just shows how much he doesn’t know, or worse yet, denies to be true. If he is so wrong about things we know about this world, how can we trust anything he says about the next life?
Gerold should take St. Augustines advice.
" Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although *they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

2 Likes
66

Tim,
Thank you for mentioning the Augustine quote. I think it is very pertinent to this issue. It is a great irony that many who are strongly motivated to uphold and protect and defend the scriptures may end up bringing them to disrepute by misrepresenting the intention of the authors. .

1 Like
67

Yes! I think fear and self-protection is what keeps a lot of us clinging to old ideas and misdiagnosing curiosity as temptation. Welcome to the forum!

1 Like
68

Ironically, the quote is from Augustines work “The literal meaning of Genesis”.
I believed much of the same things Gerald does for 45+ years, and I think it is the main reason I’m no longer a Christian. I took a deep dive into studying the evidence for and against it and realized it can’t be true.
Every Church I ever attended either taught YEC, or was silent on the subject so I assumed they believed in YEC. In the last church I attended as I was leaving I found out the one preacher knew it wasn’t true, but he let his Sunday school teachers teach it to the kids. “It’s not a salvation issue.” Now I realize that he would probably have lost his job if he challenged it.

2 Likes
69

Here’s my summary of the discussion to this point:

Young earth creationism is primarily motivated by the legitimate desire to protect the authority of Scripture. One’s particular belief in how creation took place is not a salvation issue, although some creationists would like to make it so. When the curtain is pulled back on YEC, when people see the questionable tactics used to convince people and induce fear of the alternatives, some evangelicals lose their faith. Others, on the other hand, have their faith enriched.

The optimal situation is to possess the best of faith and the best of science. Unfortunately, many church members – especially young people – are given the impression that they must choose one or the other. So they do. Too many leave the church, especially after experiencing “science shock” when they get to university or college and hear the other half of the story – the part they were not told about in their local church. Some individuals – especially church leaders – try to deal with this issue by avoiding it. But the issue will surely come up in conversation and science is often mentioned in the media.

Young earth creationism has its share of courageous individual who are willing to present their side of the story and be on the receiving end of rebuttals from folks who hold to a pro-science position. This discussion reminds us of the importance of accurate biblical interpretation, an area of theology called hermeneutics. What’s needed is respectful conversation, despite the fact that the topic is one of the most controversial in evangelicalism.

Many evangelicals are proud literalists, arguing that we ought to “just read the words off the page.” But, to many, that kind of reading can best be called “literalistic,” and, instead of accurately reproducing the author’s intention, skims over the surface of the text and sometimes makes the scriptures say what God never intended. What is needed is a literary reading, one that takes into account the nuances and complexities involved in extracting the intended message from ancient documents.

This thread covers a lot of ground. The validity of scientific knowledge. The challenge of interpreting the Scriptures. The all or nothing, take it or leave it views of the creationists. An important part of YEC is presuppositionalism – the idea that the only valid worldview is that which is solely determined by the Scriptures. Should scientific evidence differ from the YEC interpretation, science is obviously in the wrong. What this means is that no scientific evidence is sufficient to convince a young earth creationist to accommodate scientific realities. That’s where we trust God’s Holy Spirit to “lead us into all truth.” (John 16:13)

1 Like
70

Well then, welcome!

I agree. It seems to me that pastors are primarily tasked with creating and empowering “disciple makers” (part of which is done by modeling–both the doing and showing others to do). Exposing false and dangerous ideas can be part of that, but it would be way down the list of priorities. There are a whole lot of false and dangerous ideas in the world, many of which are controversial and not much to do with following Jesus (hey, just start with the efficacy of vaccinations or essential oils or political allegiances and see how far you get).

Usually not, I don’t think. “It’s not science, so we’re not wasting our time and we’re certainly not going to give them a platform.” It’s the same reason Ken Hamm was only able to get Bill Nye to the public debate table. It was more of a public debacle than a public debate. I really feel like I could have replaced either one and done a better job.

I agree with that. And in the conversations, opponents have not been good at effectively explaining their own biases and prejudices, and recognizing those of the opponents. Many times, they completely demolish frail straw men.

Sometimes, that happens only from one side.

In the example above (Bill Nye and Ken Hamm), they shared an hour talking past each other, neither effectively addressing the core presuppositions and neither taking the time to make sure they were even understanding each other’s position.

But how are you defining “inerrant, infallible, and authoritative”? I’ve seen that done a number of ways. I had moved somewhat away from “inerrant” (but I like infallible and authoritative, and I love “trustworthy”); until I came across someone that defined it somewhat differently than it was “generally understood,” and he justified his definition with appeal to one of the “Chicago signers.” It was in this book:

https://www.amazon.ca/Views-Biblical-Inerrancy-Albert-Mohler/dp/0310331366/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?keywords=four+views+on+inerrancy&qid=1561823236&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmr1

Bang on.

Again, bang on.

1 Like
71

I would add that proud literalists are unaware of the philosophical roots of their position and ignorantly (and many times arrogantly) presume that their position is correct because “that’s they way scripture has always been read by those that were correct.”

1 Like
72

It’s a shame that your response to the message of Jesus was determined by a position on “not the message of Jesus” (i.e., it’s really you’re response to a message about the Bible).

73

Thanks for the encouragement fmiddel -. I don’t mind using the word "inerrant” because I am referring to what God intends to communicate, not necessarily what humans a first glance might think it means .

If God’s revelation is to function as communication it must not only be presented by God to human experience, I think it must also be received and comprehended by human experience. Otherwise it remains an incomprehensible unintelligible display. Communication is not accomplished until at least part of the intended message is comprehended by the receiver.

How about this example: the husband takes the shopping list and purchases everything on it. There are no spelling errors on the list, and although some of the items seem a bit unusual, from his knowledge of his family’s culture he even correctly interprets the “right” product brands even though they were not explicitly noted on the list. He returns home with the items expecting to be praised for his successful interpretation and faithful obedience to all its implied imperatives. On his arrival however he is chagrinned to discover that what he thought was the shopping list was actually one of the children’s spelling lists.

The next week, this time making sure he has what is actually intended to be the shopping list, he repeats his trip to the store. This time the list has been dictated by the mom, but written by the child as spelling practice. This time most of the words on the list were misspelled but nevertheless adequate to be sufficiently interpreted as to which product was intended and so the dad returns successfully with the correct purchases.

The question arises: in which case was the communication “inerrant, infallible and authoritative” In the first case the list itself is inerrant, but what is communicated to the man is not intended ( just plain wrong) because of the errors in his presupposition and interpretation and comprehension of the meaning that is intended by it. In the second case the vehicle of communication (written words) was full of errors but nevertheless accomplished without error ‘that to which it was sent’ (back to Isaiah 55:10-11).

So I like your term “trustworthy”. And I wonder … in matters of faithful discipleship and evangelism, is it not enough to say that the revelation contained in Scripture is “Sufficient” ?

4 Likes
74

A wife told her husband to go to the store and buy milk. And if they have eggs, buy 12. So he came home with 12 milks.

2 Likes
75

lol. One of the useless things I learned for my MA comps was that English has four ifs. The standard conditional, “if it rains, we won’t go swimming.” Relevance conditionals: “If you are hungry there’s food in the fridge.” Factual conditionals, “If the book is that bad, stop reading it.” Concessive conditionals: “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last person on earth.”

I know you all keep me around here because I can enthrall you with these kind of irrelevant tidbits that take up all the memory space in my brain, so I now can’t remember my cell phone number.

5 Likes
76

Yes. English is a lot of fun. There may actually be great relevance in these “irrelevant tidbits”.
Misunderstanding the example of food-in-the-fridge as a conditional if might make me think you were suggesting the corollory that unless I am hungry there will not be food in the fridge. I might go on to build an argument based on your appaent proposition that it is my hunger which causes food to appear in the fridge. I wonder how many times I might have done something like this while teaching the Bible?

1 Like