I suspect you are well aware of the dozens of Flood stories around the ancient world. The questions are:
Are the stories independent of each other? If so a global Flood starts to make sense. On the other hand it was God’s clear intention to destroy all living, so how can the stories be independent of each other?
If the Flood story has one origin (as Scripture claims) then the testimonies of the 8 survivors were retold and retold each culture adding their own ingredients (North American indians surviving in a canoe) contaminating the original story. As such we can understand the Gilgamesh Flood, the closest of all to the Noah Flood in content and geology, the lesser the distance the lesser the contamination.
Your Zanclean Flood theory is interesting but it was not global.
Bottom line, nothing is satisfying, like so many other issues.
We gotta have faith. Jesus said so repeatedly. My previous “because!” remark was also quite finger pointing to myself
A global flood is as nonsensical as the sun stopping in the sky and physical resurrection. The evidence (physical or Biblical) simply cannot support any such things. It is therefore infinitely more reasonable to accept the idea that the stories are accounted for by a large but local flood, subjective experience of time, and Paul’s explanation of resurrection in 1 Cor 15.
Not if “faith” means a termination of brain activity. But as leap which we make over a lack of evidence then yes, that is something which even scientists have to do.
At the same time, you are telling us that God intended the biblical authors to write a historical and scientific narrative of the past. You are telling us you do know God’s intent.
As a suggestion, you should check out Cardinal Bellarmine’s letter to Foscarini. Bellarmine was the official in charge of Galileo’s inquisition hearings, and Bellarmine made it quite obvious that Heliocentrism ran contrary to what the Bible stated. If you are a Heliocentrist, then you are as much an accommodationist as anyone else.
I don’t know why that is so ‘revealing’ because I have been saying it throughout this thread. One can’t take all faith out of religion but one can find anchor points in the observables. My Turkish translator was one such observational anchor point for my faith. For the disciples their absolute anchor point was that they saw the risen Christ. That would change a man forever–it was observable and objective since over 500 saw him at one time, and the disciples saw him several times.
But my bedrock faith does necessarily reach down to those axiomatic foundations (presuppositions) that themselves are my premises prior to anything like science.
I don’t know quite how you can say this. Your axioms are accepted by faith. All assumptions/presuppositions/axioms are accepted as true but unproven. Some of these assumptions are that Christianity is true, that God exists, and that the other religions are false, an assumption that keeps God from being schizophrenic (telling one group one thing and another a different thing). So the question of which religion is true simply can’t be answered by knowing what your parents believed.
No, I am not. I am telling you that. I am telling you that the account CAN be historical. As evidence of this, aquaticus, go look at post 30 where I say:
“Take my views. one reason I haven’t really pushed them much over the years (admittedly I am doing a bit of pushing before my exit stage right), is that while I know they match reality, I can’t prove they ARE reality.”
the problem is that you love your caricature of my views rather than the actual views I am posting and you don’t take my views seriously so you don’t pay attention to what I have said. I think there is another post expressing the same thing, but the above will suffice to counter your erroneous claim. Been here done this before–this ain’t my first rodeo in this kind of debate. I see this all the time
Sigh, I know who Bellarmine was. You wrote:
As a suggestion, you should check out Cardinal Bellarmine’s letter to Foscarini. Bellarmine was the official in charge of Galileo’s inquisition hearings, and Bellarmine made it quite obvious that Heliocentrism ran contrary to what the Bible stated. If you are a Heliocentrist, then you are as much an accommodationist as anyone else.
In post 194, today, I said: My view is also not anti-science If you actually paid attention to the debate you could guess from the above what my view about heliocentricity is. See, you love your caricature me, of my views and of anyone who disagrees with you more than you love reality. If you wanted reality you would ditch your caricature. I leave the logical deduction about heliocentricity for your homework. think clearly.
So does that make me an accommodationalist? No. God didn’t say it was geocentric. I think we will all agree that what the witch of Endor says about spiritual matters might be suspect. We also might think that Job’s ‘friends’ might not be the best source of information about God, nor Simon the Magician who tried to buy the holy spirit. Similarly what Isaac believed about mating sheep in front of stripped visuals, doesn’t have to be correct. That is what Isaac believed, not what God said. So for the geocentric earth, Joshua spoke the request for the sun and moon to stand still to God, requesting it, God didn’t say that. Habbakuk 3:11 is in a vision of his. Again, God didn’t say it Habakkuk just reported what he saw, It wasn’t God who said what happened. To me, that makes a difference.
It is not me who has problems with miracles–it is you. I don’t try to explain miracles, and just because others believed that such verses taught geocentrism still doesn’t mean God endorsed such a concept. As far as I can tell God is silent on that issue–even though Belarmine wasn’t silent when he should have been.
People forget that the Ptolemaic system was the scientific explanation of Belarmine’s day. It was a way to calculate where the planets would be. It worked. The problem was that when doubts grew about that system, which had been incorporated into Scriptural views, They didn’t say, ok, we need to re-examine our interpretation of those verses. Instead, they said, I will hold to my theological interpretation instead of the data I see. It was Belarmine, not the Bible who was unscientific. Should hard data be discovered against my views, I will search for another path forward, not hold to my view forever. I have already done this several times in my life. I have a track record of dumping disproven views.
As I mentioned above, I can’t prove my views. I do know they match a real geologic event and that event fits the Biblical description of the flood.
I am aware of those stories and I don’t pay much attention to them as supporting a global flood, or even use them as a shared memory. My flood is too far back for that. I think God inspired the Biblical writer and that is how we got the story. But for all I know, God might be nudging other cultures to pay attention to him through those stories. Chinese christens make much adoo about what they see as the similarities between their written language and the Bible. Righteousness is the character for a lamb on top of the character for me. They see that lamb as the lamb of God. They also made a big deal out of their character for boat, chuan, which has the character 8 and mouth, meaning 8 mouths, the number n the ark. I don’t do much with that cause I don’t know quite what to do, but God is using things like that, and there is so much of that kind of stuff.
If the Flood story has one origin (as Scripture claims) then the testimonies of the 8 survivors were retold and retold each culture adding their own ingredients (North American indians surviving in a canoe) contaminating the original story. As such we can understand the Gilgamesh Flood, the closest of all to the Noah Flood in content and geology, the lesser the distance the lesser the contamination.
While that might work for a pathetic Mesopotamian flood, which should have flushed the ark into the Persian Gulf, it really won’t work for the vast time frame ago where I place the flood. At least I won’t claim it does. But I, unlike accommodationalists, don’t claim to know what God’s intention is. If there is that with my flood, it would have to be God who kept it alive.
Your Zanclean Flood theory is interesting but it was not global.
You know why it isn’t global? Because eretz means land or country. It doesn’t mean Planet Earth. Cain was told to go to the eretz of Nod. Did Cain go to another planet? If you believe eretz means planet earth, then Cain left for Mars or some other place–Abram was told to leave his eretz and to to an eretz God would show him. Is Abram a space alien? Even in early Genesis eretz isn’t being used as ‘planet earth’ but is being used as land. So why would I believe eretz suddenly means planet earth in Genesis 6-9?
Here is another case where eretz can’t be used as planet earth because if we do, then this is how the verse below should read:
–Gen 2:11-13, The name of the first is Pishon: that is it which compasseth the whole Planet of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 and the gold of that planet is good: …the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole Planet of Cush
No, the Bible clearly teaches that the flood was local. Belief that the flood must be global is based upon a bad understanding of this one word.
You continue with this strange outlook where fables are lies. You call them “false nonsensical fables”. How can fables be false? You appear to have this dichotomy where scripture is either a historical account or false.
Then why do you attack accommodationists for accepting science? If science says one thing and a literal interpretation of scripture says another, don’t you think it wise to consider the possibility that those specific verses were not meant to be a literal historical account?
According to Cardinal Bellarmine, the Bible does say that the Sun moves about the Earth.
Traditionally, Moses is the author of Genesis, so Genesis is what Moses reported. How is that different from what you wrote above?
I think it is more a question of parsimony. If there is evidence for a natural process then there is no need to invoke a miracle. At the same time, where there is no evidence one way or another then miracles can be accepted through faith without needing to conflict with scientific discoveries.
Isn’t this exactly what the accommodationists have done?
Of course I am arguing that position but I am NOT telling you what God intended. You have slickly changed the issue. You wrote:
> you are telling us that God intended the biblical authors to write a historical and scientific narrative of the past
While I think I have a scenario that matches actual geologic history, something yall don’t have, I said nothing about what God intended. That is you projecting your approach on to me. I am the one who believes that it must be historical or God is clueless, but I have no secret knowledge of God’s psychology as accommodationalists claim to have.
You continue with this strange outlook where fables are lies. You call them “false nonsensical fables”. How can fables be false? You appear to have this dichotomy where scripture is either a historical account or false.
Sigh, it isn’t hard. Hebrews 6:18 says “it is impossible for God to lie”. Lie means not telling the truth. Fables are not true. period. This is a simple syllogism that should be understandable. I will ask, do you think God can lie? Do you not like YEC views because they say false things about Nature, but then you cut God slack so He can say false things about Nature? Please answer these questions.
Then why do you attack accommodationists for accepting science? If science says one thing and a literal interpretation of scripture says another, don’t you think it wise to consider the possibility that those specific verses were not meant to be a literal historical account?
Lordie Lordie, you really haven’t paid any attention here. I don’t attack them for accepting science. I attack them for illogically saying the early genesis is untrue but then the Bible is still worthy to be believed. I haven’t said anything about their views on science. I have spent bucket loads of electrons pointing out that accommodationalism is logically bizarre. But it is all about their view of Scripture.
According to Cardinal Bellarmine, the Bible does say that the Sun moves about the Earth.
so what? Is he the authority we must all bow to? A YEC could mimick your statement and claim: “According to Henry Morris, the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old.” Are you going to follow leaders unthinkingly, uncritically. I thought scientists were supposed to be people who challenged the status quo. I thought scientists were supposed to think originally. Trying to use the logical fallacy of ‘Argument from Authority’, which is a formal logical fallacy in my grad school books on logic, is not a good argument. it is precisely this kind of illogic that makes me loathe accommodationalism.
Again, you have paid no attention to previous posts of mine. Over and over I have said, in Genesis the only speaker is God. Now, if you think God was Moses’ alter-ego, Moses’ puppet into which Moses put Moses’ words, then I would say that given that, there is no reason to believe the message of the bible. I don’t care what hallucination Moses had. I will listen to what God said with much greater attention.
I think it is more a question of parsimony. If there is evidence for a natural process then there is no need to invoke a miracle. At the same time, where there is no evidence one way or another then miracles can be accepted through faith without needing to conflict with scientific discoveries
On this we can agree. We now have one area of agreement.
Isn’t this exactly what the accommodationists have done?
Absolutely not!!! One can reject views based on lack of evidence (which in some sense accommodationalists do) but if one runs to an illogical view, then that should be rejected as well. Science isn’t just data and it isn’t just logic. Science is the mixture of the two, logic plus data. Unfortunately they don’t teach logic in schools anymore. It seems only to be taught in philosophy departments.
While I agree that they have run from YEC because YEC is false, but then they declare all these areas of the bible false but say we should believe the message of the Bible. And while running from the false statements about Nature from YECS, they turn around and let God say silly things about Nature. Why? Based upon what? Remember, Genesis 1 is filled with “And God said”'s. Since nothing in it is considered real, not creation, not the Fall (a very basic thing for Christianity), not the flood, not even the Exodus, and often not even miracles, upon what basis do we conclude that the bible presents the path to Salvation? Or is this like the team sport of Dems and Republicans that no matter how badly my team acts, I still must support it. God help us if Christianity becomes merely team loyalty.
Well, it’s not only about the word eretz what’s make the understanding of Gen 6-9 a global event, but let’s check Scripture:
6:7 - So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.
6:13 - And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
7:19 - And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. 20 The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.
7:21 - And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. 22 Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth.
all flesh
all mankind
all montains under the whole heaven (can’t be eretz)
everything on the face of the ground (can’t be eretz)
2 Pet 2:5 - if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
How do we know its God? Where does it say that? What if it is the author telling a series of stories about creation in the type of style that was common to the ANE environment?
I read this word as "science not “silence” thus my response below… I am not even sure what an argument from silence is supposed to refer to… oh… looked it up… argument from absence of evidence. …no I don’t do such a thing at all.
It is not the same at all. With science you have written procedures anyone can follow to get the same result – something which every student of science does in learning of science. So along with every statement that science says something is the phrase “and follow the procedure yourself if you don’t believe it.”
Nope this doesn’t follow. Next you will be telling us that “all flesh” means that God wiped out all life in the universe, that God covered all the mountains and ground on every planet in the universe. YOUR assumptions about the extent of this flood extending to the whole planet does make it so. The simple fact is that the concept of “the world” at the time of this story was NOT a planet or anything “global.” It was the ground and mountains that human beings lived in and could see, and the picture of the world/earth given in the Bible was a table not a globe. So all of mankind? Absolutely! This was flood was wiping out the first human civilizations and all that lived in the world they knew. But that is all!
Yeah, I think the problem is black and white thinking, when it should be obvious that this is a continuous spectrum. We all draw an arbitrary line somewhere according what makes things most meaningful in the context of our own knowledge and experience. But rather than labeling everyone on the other side of that line with an epithet of “accommodationalism” or “absolutely wrong” we need to recognize as you have done that we are all really in the same boat seeking the compromises that work best in the context of our own system of thought.
So gbob and I are on the same side when it comes to an insistence on a large local flood in agreement with science which finds no evidence of a global flood. We disagree on the Zanclean flood theory because I think that is way too far in the past pushing man’s relationship with God into insignificance. And this is only one of the many issues where we simply draw our line in a different place.
In my scenario, mankind was limited in distribution. The time of the Mediterranean flood was just at the time hominids first appeared on earth. People always try to say that the fossil evidence doesn’t support my view that there were intelligent, image of God bearing people alive back then. Well, the fossil record is so sparse that we can’t really say what didn’t exist. I mentioned this earlier, that only 3% of living animals are found as fossils. This applies to animals with bones.
" The number of living species that have been described is about 1.5 million…If we focus on the paleontologically important groups, present-day diversity is about 180,000 species. …Suppose we assume that the present-day level of diversity was attained immediately at the beginning of the Cambrian Period and has been maintained since then. Then 25 percent of 180,000 species, or 45,000 species became extinct and were replaced by new species every million years. In rough terms, the Phanerozoic is 550 million years log. this leads to an estimate that there have been 180,000+(45,000 X 550) or about 25 million species. Comparing this with the 300,000 described fossil species implies that between 1 percent and 2 percent of species are known as fossils. " 3
So,98-99% of species were never fosilized. That means the critics can’t be sure Leviathan didn’t exist. Regardless of this, one might say I cherry picked a quote, but this concept of the rarity of fossilization is wide-spread. Prothero goes through the calculation in other ways:
" Let us start with some simple estimates. We have already estimated that there are 1.5 million described species, or as many as 4.5 to 10 million described and undescribed species of organisms alive on Earth today. How many species are known as fossils? It turns out that there are only about 250,000 described species of fossil plants and animals presently known, or only 5% of the total for species living today. " 4
He then goes on to focus on marine invertebrates. Marine invertebrates are the best animals to get fossilized. They can’t run from a landslide of sediment(turbidites) coming to cover them. Such things happen at earthquakes and when sediment accumulates so much that the pile sloughs off some of its mass.
" Let us just focus on nine well-skeltonized phyla of marine invertebrates and see if we come up with better estimates. These nine phyla are the Protista, Archaeocyatha, Porifera, Cnidaria, Bryozoa, Brachiopoda, Mollusca, Echinodermata, and Arthropoda (excluding insects). In these groups, there are about 150,000 living species, but more than 180,000 fossil species. To translate these numbers into completeness estimates, we need to know the turnover rate of species and the number of coexisting species through time. Different values have been used for each of these variables, but the results of the calculations are remarkably similar. Durham estimated that about 2.3% of all the species in these nine phyla were fossilized. Valentine gave estimates that ranged from 4.5% to 13.6%. No matter which method we use, we must conclude that 85% to 97% of all the species in these nine well-skeletonized phyla that have ever lived have never been fossilized. "5
No matter how one estimates this, the number of species that are fossilized is quite small.
" About 300,000 species of fossil organisms have been described and the number is growing steadily. However, this number is only a tiny fraction of the species that have ever lived. We do not know how many species lived in the past but we have ways of making reasonable estimates. Of the present-day biota, approximately 1.7 million species have been named. The actual number of living species is probably at least 10 million, because most species of insects and mites (the animal groups with the largest numbers of species; see Chapter 32) have not yet been described. So the number of described fossil species is less than 2 percent of the probable minimum number of living species." 6
3. Michael Foote et al, Principles of Paleontology, (New York, W. H. Freeman and Co., 2007), p 23
4. Donald R. Prothero, Bringing Fossils to Life: An Introduction to Paleobiology, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), p.21.
5 Donald R. Prothero, Bringing Fossils to Life: An Introduction to Paleobiology, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), p.21.
6. David E. Sadava, H. Craig Heller, William K. Purves, Gordon H. Orians, and David M. Hillis, Life: the Science of Biology, (MacMillan, 2008), p.472
6:13 - And God said to Noah, “I have determined to make an end of all flesh , for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
The meaning of this verse depends upon the meaning of eretz. All flesh on the eretz will be killed, but God didn’t put an end to all that flesh, so this verse can’t quite mean what you think it does. God put some of that flesh on a boat and saved it. So, all, here doesn’t mean ALL.
7:19 - And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. 20 The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.
Again, this verse could be read that the waters prevailed on the land …
but the phrase under the whole heaven needs to be discussed. Job, is considered one of the earliest books in the Bible, and its use of ‘under the whole heaven’ sheds light on what this phrase meant. I examine all the cases of this phrase in my book:
Reading these verses with “land” substituted for “earth” one is struck by the relative lack of evidence for a global flood. (Chapter 6) Our modern concept of ‘Earth’ is what requires the global view. But there are two places that might seem to imply a global flood. These occur in Genesis 6:17 and 7:19 and refer to the phrase “under the whole heavens.” Given the lack of support for global flood in the verses listed above, the issue now rests in the meaning of the phrase ‘under the whole heavens’ or
‘under heaven’. If this phrase was understood by the Hebrew mind as referring to the encircling sky, then the flood must be global. However even this phrase is used in a local sense in two of its occurrences.
This phrase, or one similar to it, occurs in 10 other verses. In Deuteronomy 30:4 the NIV translates the passage “the most distant land under the heavens,” but it is not exactly clear what the Hebrew view of that was. This verse is possibly a case of the term being used globally. Job 28:24 is also a case in which it is probably used in a global sense. God, in this verse, sees everything under the heavens. In Jeremiah 10:11 it is talking about other gods who did not make the heavens and the earth. They will perish from the ‘eretz’ (land or earth) and from under the heavens. Since most ancient peoples believed that their gods were only gods of the local region, this usage must be considered inconclusive. Lamentations 3:66 is also inconclusive. The phrase is isolated with little context to decide. Pursue and destroy them from under the heavens. How are we to decide on this case? In Daniel 7:27 the phrase is global. In Daniel 9:12 the term is definitely used in a limited sense. Daniel is talking about the destruction of Jerusalem saying that nothing under the whole heaven had ever been done like that to another city. Locally, Daniel’s statement was true, but globally it was not. Even Jericho, not too far away, had been totally destroyed by an invasion of the Hebrews themselves. In this case, the term must be used either locally or hyperbolically. In Deuteronomy 2:25 it says,
“This day will I begin to put the dread of thee and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven, who shall hear report of thee, and shall tremble, and be in anguish because of thee.”
This is surely used in a local perspective. The people in the Americas had no fear of the ancient Hebrews. The Australian aborigines also had no fear. Deuteronomy 4:19 is unclear as to its usage. The verse says “serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven.” That does not make it clear either way. Job 28:24 says, “For [God] looketh to the ends of the earth and seeth under the whole heaven;…” While we might view this in a global perspective, it is still unclear from this exactly how the Hebrews viewed it. In Job 37:3 is a clear-cut case of the local or hyperbolic use of this term. Job 37:2-4 states
“Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice, to the rumbling that comes from his mouth. He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven and sends it to the ends of the earth. After that comes the sound of his roar; he thunders with his majestic voice. When his voice resounds, he holds nothing back.” (NIV)
Elihu is the speaker and he is describing the lightning and thunder which he has seen and heard. Lightning can only be seen out to the horizon and it can be heard out to about 5 or 6 miles. What Elihu is describing is the fact that he sees the lightning and then hears the thunder. He could not hear thunder from Damascus or Babylon or Beijing or Washington, D. C. He must be using the term “under the whole heaven” to refer out to the horizon. Here we have one case which undoubtedly uses the term in a local or hyperbolic sense." Glenn R. Morton, Foundation, Fall and Flood, DMD Publishing co, 1998, p. 167-168
You wrote:
7:21 - And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind . 22 Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. 23 He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth.
all flesh
all mankind
all montains under the whole heaven (can’t be eretz )
everything on the face of the ground (can’t be eretz )
2 Pet 2:5 - if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;
Surely Peter’s way of thinking was global.
What Peter thought is not clear. If we go by the oft used meaning of the Greek word Peter uses, then the flood was much bigger than even you think. lol. Peter used the word kosmos. To the Greeks it meant world order, to us it means ‘universe’. To support my view that it means ‘order’ or structure, Homer used Kosmos to describe the structrure of the Trojan Horse Hippou kosmon, to transliterate it.
> ἵππου κόσμον, the structure of the horse, of the Trojan horse
*> * > Sasse, H. (1964–). κοσμέω, κόσμος, κόσμιος, κοσμικός. G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological dictionary of the New Testament (electronic ed., Vol. 3, p. 868). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
This dictionary notes that it is used of the order ship rowers sat, the state(as in condition) of the Spartans, It is also used by Greek philosophers in the sense of ‘world order’, as in the nature of this universe. But only moderns use it as a synonym for the universe. If you want to believe that the flood destroyed the entire universe, that is your privilege but it wouldn’t match the meaning of kosmos in ancient times. So, again, I don’t think your view holds up.
I had mis-written, “Over andover I have said in Genesis the only speaker is God.” I left the Genesis 1 out, I guess I thought context would make that clear or I just mistyped.
That sentence should read “Over andover I have said in Genesis 1, the only speaker is God.”
Hi Orthodox. No, you are not off base to express your views. That said, don’t expect all to agree here, generally I am the one who can get people to pile on me. lol I don’t mind because I spent years struggling with these issues and I am the outsider challenger–that is always a tougher path.
Of your idea. Let us differentiate two categories of knowledge. Facts, and Moral/philosophical/theological. The former are subject to observation and refutation. Things offered as facts are subject to what Mitch calls, black and white thinking, which I call logical thinking or the application of logic to the issue. Geology means ‘earth logic’; biology means ‘life logic’, etc.
Statements made about nature are subject to being judged as true or false. If I say, that gravity attracts with the third power of the distance, that statement would be absolutely false–observationally false. Gravity attracts with the square of the distance as thousands of observations attest.
Moral/philosophical/theological statements are not subject to objective verification. We can’t verify that there is a heaven, or that God loves us, or that we should not steal, murder, or worship other gods. There is nothing observational we can say about those issues. Thus we can’t say if they are true or false, and Mitch will be happy to hear that black and white thinking doesn’t apply to this category of statements.
Now, we have a theological statement in Hebrews 6:18 which says “it is impossible for God to lie”. If God said nothing to us, we would not be able to verify this. But if God speaks on some description of Nature, then we can compare that statement with what we know of Nature. If God had ever said that gravity attracts at the third power of the distance, we could clearly say, that it is possible for God to lie. Should God have ever said, 'Rabbits don’t exist" then again, we could claim the falsity of the claim 'God can’t lie".
But if all God ever speaks on is on moral/philosophical/theological things, Like don’t steal, then we could never know whether that was a true or false statement. We can’t know if God is lying to us about us being saved through faith. There isn’t any way to verify this statement on this side of death.
With this as background, When God in Genesis 1 speaks on how Nature was created, then He gives us loads of chances to verify the statement that He doesn’t lie. If we say Genesis 1 is false, then we have implicitly stated that God lied, because God is the only speaker in Genesis 1 and because he is making statements about Nature. Such statements are verifiable or as Mitch says, subject to black and white thinking. One out to this is to say these are not God’s words but human words, but if that is the case there is no metaphysical value to that chapter, at least.
My approach eventually made me look for another approach and I found it in St. Basil. The context is that the first day is not called the first day, it is called ‘one day’. Basil found this odd and then said, this day is connected with eternity past. He wrote:
If then the beginning of time is called “one day” rather than “the first day,” it is because Scripture wishes to establish its relationship with eternity. It was, in reality, fit and natural to call “one” the day whose character is to be one wholly separated and isolated from all the others.http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/
He clarified his views further when he wrote:
" It appears, indeed, that even before this world an order of things(1) existed of which our mind can form an idea, but of which we can say nothing, because it is too lofty a subject for men who are but beginners and are still babes in knowledge. The birth of the world was preceded by a condition of things suitable for the exercise of supernatural powers, outstripping the limits of time, eternal and infinite. The Creator and Demiurge of the universe perfected His works in it, spiritual light for the happiness of all who love the Lord, intellectual and invisible natures, all the orderly arrangement(2) of pure intelligences who are beyond the reach of our mind and of whom we cannot even discover the names."
St. Basil, Homily I, one can get this electronically at: http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/
Basil was the originator of the Days of Proclamation view, but he only applied it to the first day. When God said, “let there be light”, it was the human editor who added, ‘and it was so’. In each of the statements there is a distinction between what God said, and what the editor wrote–the and it was so. This means that there was a period of time between the statement and the ‘and it was so’ How long was that time? We don’t know because humans were not there to say ‘it was so’ when God created the light. The Big Bang was billions of years before any human could have written ‘and it was so’ so, it is quite easy to put all the days into that ‘world order of things which existed before this world’
Doing this, solves all the wrong or bad order of created things. It makes Genesis 1 be the planning for the universe, not the actual creation. It is a different way of looking at Genesis 1 and through this interpretation we can conform to science and not have to proclaim how false our Bible is to one and all and then ask them to become Christians. A very bizarre approach in my opinion.
Today at my son’s church I saw a perfect illustration of why historicity is important. It had nothing to do with Genesis, but Genesis isn’t the only place that historicity in Scripture is important. Jesse was baptized today, in a hurry, normal baptism would be two weeks from now. Jesse won’t be here then because she is going home to China, a place I lived for a couple of years.
As background, the average Chinese has little knowledge or understanding of Christianity. My secretary over there, Fan Chun Mei refused to even take a Bible from me and acted like it was a bewitched object she dare not get close to. My driver once was walking with me to show me where a particular market was that I wanted to shop at. On the way, we saw a beggar, whose arms and legs had been burned off and his torso had horrid burn scars. I generally didn’t give to beggers, especially not to the children who were being abused to get money for adults. But this guy, yeah. Xiao Zhou got in between me and that beggar and he pushed me away from him to keep me from giving him money. We went on and I shopped, and on the way back, alone, I gave the money and then found Xiao Zhou waiting in the van for me. We had a discussion about being our brother’s keeper, the Golden rule, and even original sin. All of this was new for Xiao Zhou and most of it went right over his head.
Because of this, Jesse’s testimony made perfect sense to me. She is a medical doctor and was puzzled by the miracles she would see among some patients that defied science. A friend gave her a Bible but it was left unread for 3 years until her son was born prematurely and his health was bad. She would read the Bible and feel peace. But then she began to wonder if Jesus was really a historical person, who lived in our reality or was he mythological. She had to convince herself that Jesus was a real person. When she did, she didn’t become a Christian immediately but when she started having trouble in her marriage, again she would feel peace when reading the Scripture. Within the past 2 weeks she became a Christian. She had been attending our congregation so she requested a special baptismal service and she was baptized today.
If people don’t believe in a historical Jesus, or a Jesus who can perform miracles they are not likely to become believers. If God, today can’t do miracles, then we might as well agree with what the communist party is doing in China to Christians. If Jesus can’t help them, then they might as well turn to the government:
Communist Party of China (CPC) officials visited believers’ homes in Yugan county of Jiangxi province—where about 10 percent of the population is Christian. They urged residents to replace personal religious displays with posters of President Xi Jinping; more than 600 removed Christian symbols from their living rooms, and 453 hung portraits of the Communist leader, according to SCMP.
The efforts were part of a government campaign to alleviate poverty in the region, since some CPC members believe families’ faith is to blame for their financial woes, according to SCMP. The poster swaps in villagers’ homes represent the party’s desire to have residents look to their leaders, rather than their Savior, for assistance.
“Many poor households have plunged into poverty because of illness in the family. Some resorted to believing in Jesus to cure their illnesses,” the head of the government campaign told SCMP. “But we tried to tell them that getting ill is a physical thing, and that the people who can really help them are the Communist Party and General Secretary Xi.”
The above article is what we get and what we deserve if we believe God can’t do miracles in the here and now.
, many unanswered questions.
so what? Is he the authority we must all bow to? A YEC could mimick your statement and claim: “According to Henry Morris, the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old.” Are you going to follow leaders unthinkingly, uncritically. I thought scientists were supposed to be people who challenged the status quo. I thought scientists were supposed to think originally. Trying to use the logical fallacy of ‘Argument from Authority’, which is a formal logical fallacy in my grad school books on logic, is not a good argument. it is precisely this kind of illogic that makes me loathe accommodationalism.