Absolutely! Anyone who would say that the majority of the Orthodox are not going to Heaven is in good company… (depending on how you define “good”).
I don’t know enough about Orthodox theology to have an opinion on that. And I never said it was a necessary Position for salvation.
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I wouldn’t say that. Anyway, this is different from what you said before, which is pretty anti-Semitic:
“The Christian position is essentially that The Jews have completely missed the point of their entire text.”
I would say that. Being anti-Semitic was not my intention. However, If Jesus is the point of the Old Testament, then the Jews did miss the point. Which is my point.
This actually seems to me to be a more complicated issue than most Evangelicals present it as. Jesus and other New Testament authors creatively appropriated and reinterpreted Old Testament texts to develop their theology and make their points. This was all totally acceptable withing Jewish rabbinic tradition. But those same texts had a meaning in their original context and I seriously doubt that the prophets were consciously prophesying about Jesus or that most interpreters would have made that connection. I think what the Jews failed to do is accept Jesus’ and the apostle’s recontextualization of their texts to serve the Gospel message.
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I understand that. I’m not saying they had no other meaning. Just that their most important meaning was missed. And prophesy doesn’t have to be conscious.
I think the proper understanding is that both Jews and Christians agree that there are passages in the Hebrew Bible that foretell of the coming of God’s Messiah.
Christians believe that Jesus is that Messiah, while Jews do not.
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You are right, Roger. The Orthodox Jews, especially, still await the coming of ha-Mashiach who will redeem the world.
These are NOT contradictory accounts of Creation. They are the same story told from two perspectives, God’s account and Adam’s. Many Christians struggle trying to understand Genesis 1:1 - 2:4 because of the Latin traditions: the ex nihilo version of Creation. Yet 2/3rds of the Hebrew verbs in this section refer to continuing commands or actions that continue in unbroken continuity. He did not say once, Let there be light. In Hebrew he continues to command the light. We are never told he stopped commanding the light. When he completed the heavens and the Earth, the verbs show continuing actions. How can you continue what you finish? No problem in Hebrew. You can continue because the intensity of creation ends, but the finishing continues (see the specific verb forms used in Genesis 2:1-4). Hebrew had no words for time or verb tenses, so trying to fit the literal account to fit our concept of time is an exercise in futility.
The phrase herb of the field can also mean dessert plants. The context tells you what it means. In Genesis 1:11, God continues to command the ground (Biblical abiogenesis) to sprout herbage that is commanded to reproduce itself. Some plants sprouted and grew into trees, fruited and reproduced in a single afternoon. All this happened before the Sun was shining down on the Earth. Evidently, lots of things were different in that era including the duration of afternoons.
In chapter 2, the herb of the field is linked to water everywhere. In that context, it means no desert plants. Why no desert plants? He plainly tells us why? Water came out of the ground to water the entire face of the Earth. No rain. Rivers divided and flowed around the single continent. Why was there no rain. The earth was surrounded by powdered ice in that era. (See the Hebrew for Proverbs 8:28) How did the ice get above the atmosphere? On day two God continues to command an atmosphere that becomes a spreading thing between the waters above the atmosphere and the surface waters. The geysers of the deep were powerful when the solid icy clouds surrounded the Earth. Indeed, the moon Enceladus is right now today ejecting powdered ice into space from one hundred hot geysers near the South pole.
The most important thing about understanding creation is to NOT try to interpret it with science. We should use Hebrew grammar and the worldview of the authors, not science. Not one verse in the Bible would have been interpreted with a scientific mindset by a contemporary. Why not? The foundational assumption for Western science was not invented until about 700 years ago.
Victor
Do you realize your are making a pro-BioLogos point above?
Supporters frequently point out that Genesis is not a science document! So none of us are surprised that Genesis has errors about natural history.
Compare this to your implied view: because Genesis is not a science document, then that means science doesn’t apply to creation!
Wha!!!
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Science is philsophy. It is based on a priori assumptions that are not questioned or tested by its disciples. Science was first attempted by Greek philosophers. Then Catholic philosopher / priests tried to adjust the Bible to fit philosophy. . Then secular philosophers promoted the fundamental assumption upon which science was contrived.
Genesis is not science because the a priori assumption of science was not invented when the authors wrote. However, Genesis is truth, something science cannot be. Why? Science was founded on the scholastic idea that the essence of substance is changeless, that matter is not changing as it a ages. Even the definitions, measuring units and mathematical laws of science depend on this assumption.
We can see to the creation era. What is visible fits the literal words of Genesis. Everything is observed to change. The clocks and the orbits accelerate together as billions of galaxies spread out from the unformed matter God created on the first days.
Victor
I empathize with you. I also struggled looking for evidence for a Biblical creation until I asked God to help me interpret in in the worldview of the authors. I discovered that my mind had been taken captive by the elementary ideas of the world and philosophy
Have a nice day serving Him, Victor
Eddie,
Since I posted this topic some months ago, I’ve read a few books about evolution; specifically, Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True, which was fascinating. The book came highly recommended as a primer on neo-Darwinian evolution by a Christian scientist that I’m friends with online; you can read his review here if you’d like. I also read The Language of God by Francis Collins; I had my problems with the book, and I’ll hopefully be posting a review of it soon, but it was interesting to read his life story, coming from atheism to Christianity. He also presented a few pieces of evidence for “descent with modification” that I found helpful. Nowadays, I’m not at all opposed to descent with modification. I’ll let the scientists argue about the mechanism (I am not a scientist by any stretch).
You are right to state, however, that “evolution” is a slippery term. In my conversations with my Young Earth friends, this point has been brought up many times. I try not to argue science with them, though. I prefer to stay on my home turf, that is, Biblical exegesis.
Speaking of Biblical exegesis, I’m still working out a way of interpreting Genesis 1-11 consistently and historically. John Walton’s books have been helpful in that endeavor. Inevitably, this has plunged me into some dangerous waters, as I try to weed out the exegetical gems from the eisegetical rock beds. Old Testament scholarship is hard to wade through sometimes, and not only that, the Old Testament is a difficult section of Scripture to understand. It takes quite a bit of time to fully develop a cohesive understanding of Genesis and its place in redemptive history. Since I’m a Reformed person, trying to fit this neatly into a systematic theology has also been a focus of mine.
Immensely. Thank you.
Blessings,
Jay
Exactly. The simplest and least controversial thing to show is that Earth is millions and millions and billions of years old.
Where does that leave the YEC’s?
Once you’ve demolished the Young Earth as a viable concept - - and yet still leave room for God to do whatever miraculous things he needs to do - - all you have to do is study Ring Species … an arrangement of living creatures who demonstrate geographically that over time creatures become less and less able to produce viable offspring.
And that is the basis of everything about Evolution one might wonder about.
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