Convinced of evolution, Skeptical of scripture

Faith & Science Conversation
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Interesting. I remember reading way back in the day by the apologists bent on preserving omni-benevolence that sin can’t be a thing or being. It must be a non-conformity between our will and God’s will." A gun is not evil. It is just a collection of atoms in the form metal. A fired gun is not evil. What is evil is the intent to use it to do harm. I have always fuzzily worked around that.

In your view, is “good” not defined by God? If it is you may be phrasing it differently but isn’t what you are writing really just another way of saying disobedience to the will of God leads to bad things? I do agree that sin can drag us drags us down into self-perpetuating cycles that are hard to get out of. It is definitely self-destructive.

Vinnie

42

Correct. Something is good not because God commands it, but rather God commands it because it is good. Or to put it another way, things defined by arbitrary dictates are relative to the dictator, the only absolutes are when there are actually good reasons for it.

First of all, this distinction is obsolete thinking from antiquated philosophy confusing language with reality (one of the pervasive problems with those systematic theology texts). But science has torn down the imagined barrier between thing and action to show that they have same substance (one can be converted into the other).

Secondly, if you can call a habit a thing, then you call anything a thing including your “nonconformity.” A habit is certainly NOT a collection of atoms!!! So I have no idea why you are talking about guns.

Definitely! God has the better understanding and awareness of the reasons why some things are better than other things. But even so, the commands of God can be highly relative to the circumstances. Thus as we mature it is better to understand the reasons rather than the commands.

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43

People will offer views of accommodation for Biblical cosmology but like you, I am also stuck on Old Testament morality and many contradictions I think are genuine.

I think you can have a high view of scripture but I think your understanding of the purpose and nature of scripture may have to change a bit. Mine did. As modern, fact-literal westerners many of us are so accustomed to asking “did this really happy” when reading a Biblical story. but we can’t simply pick up any book of the Bible and read it and assume its literal or things happened exactly like that. In many cases it certainly did but not all. The proper question to ask is what does this story mean? What did it mean to its author? What did it mean to its readers or hearers? What meaning can I get out of it today? Why might God have wanted this in scripture?

For example, when I read the Matthean infancy narratives from a critical perspective I see lots of problems such as conflicts with Luke’s version, a weirdly behaving star and so on. But aside from all this, what I see is Matthew recasting Jesus in light of the Old Testament. The way early Christians treated scripture is also of importance for understanding modern conceptions of the Bible. They will sometimes freely cite its words and at other times loosely reinterpret the Old Testament to make it say things it authors never intended. In the Matthean infancy narrative we find Joseph taking Mary and Jesus to Egypt to hide from King Herod until his death. Matthew 2:15 says specifically, 15 . . . this was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” When we look this verse up, we find it in the Old Testament in Hosea 11:1 but I also quote verse two for emphasis: “When Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son. 2 The more I called them the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.” This passage clearly refers to the Jews and their Exodus from Egypt. If it applied to Jesus are we to believe the more God called Jesus, the more he went away from him? But how can we conceivable imagine Jesus as fulfilling a prophecy here?

Many of the features of Matthean infancy narrative seem to have parallels in the Exodus narrative. We already saw how Matthew attributed Hosea 11:1 to Jesus. The following is paraphrased from a listing by Raymond Brown in the Birth of the Messiah (pg 113):

    1. Joseph takes the child away as Herod sought to destroy him. Moses also went away as the Pharaoh sought to kill him (Matt 2:13-14 and Exod 2:15).
    1. Herod massacred all the boys two and under in Bethlehem and the Pharaoh had every male boy be cast into the Nile.
    1. Both Kings/Pharoahs died (Matt 2:19; Exod 2:23).
    1. Moses is told to return to Egypt by God and an Angel tells Joseph to go back to the Land of Israel. Both were told those seeking him are dead (Matt 2:19-20, Exod 4:19).
    1. Both Joseph and Moses take their wife and offspring back to the destinated commanded of them ( Matt 2:21 and Exodus 4:20).

The parallels here are quite strong and just as Hosea 11:1 was taken out of context to apply to Jesus. Its seems probable the reverse could have occurred here—or do we just have one heck of a coincidence? We already know how evangelicals will respond. One, of course, would have to wonder how many of these literary coincidences would be too many for them? What does this tell us about the Christian view of Scripture at the time? To quote Bruce Vawter at length,

“The Christian community’s conviction that the prophetic spirit of the OT was the source of its own kerygma and its consequent disposition to re-read or to read into the OT in the light of the kerygma a message that the OT had not of itself possessed admittedly led to a relative lack of concern over historical human authorship and personality and literary form. But it also testified to the refusal to be governed by the letter of any text, however sacred, in the face of what was convinced that the Spirit was saying: through the witness of the Spirit it transformed the OT word into a living message for the Church of God. Clearly this was not done out of any belief that the prophetic word that it adapted so plastically was in any sense the oracular utterance of a delphic spirit, a word voiced from heaven fixed and immutable, once for all. “( pg 16-17 Biblical Inspiration)

For me, Matthew most likely created a lot of his infancy narrative out of the Old Testament. Not only that but I don’t even think the Exodus narrative Matthew created the infancy narrative out of is remotely historical as it stands. But it held immense value for Jewish people as a foundational narrative. That Matthew is not writing history or referring to history here does not mean what Matthew writes is not true. Just as Moses delivered the commandments and Law on Mount Sinai Jesus will deliver his famous sermon on a mountain in Matthew 5. For me Matthew’s point is wonderfully clear and emphatically true. As a Christian it is beyond contestation and the only thing that ultimately matters for us on historical grounds is the reality Jesus. But Matthew’s point is that Jesus is a new and greater Moses. Moses, the giver of the Law, he saw God face to face. Of immense importance to Jewish people. But Jesus is greater than him. Far greater. It is clear that Matthew saw a parallel between Jesus’ birth and the Jewish liberation from the yoke of Egyptian bondage and slavery. Jesus will provide a new and greater Exodus for the people of Israel that will lead to to fulness and a restoration of God’s kingdom on earth.

If God wanted to write us a science text we would have one.
If God wanted to write us a history text we would have one.
If God wanted to write us a rulebook we would have one.

We weren’t given any of those things. What we have is a Bible, an imperfect record (by modern standards) of some of God’s dealings with humanity. What we have are two dispensations of sacred scripture. They are our foundational stories and narratives that give us our shared identity purpose and meaning.

God wanted to create solidarity with us and lead us to redemption so we have the incarnation, we have Jesus. For all their historical issues, the Gospels tell the story of Jesus from four different angles. We get to see what Jesus meant to four different authors and communities in the first century. There is certainly a lot of overlap and in this but in the end are left a basic record of the Gospel and early Christian interpretation of it in the Epistles.

I would say I understand the Bible to serve the salvific purposes for which God intended it and nothing more. Obsessing over whether or not everything occurred as written may miss the point most of the time.

Vinnie

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44

Because most people do not think any inanimate objects can be evil or sinful (I am using them interchangeably). Sin is an action. It is something performed. But anyway, I think the distinction you dismiss comes from the theodice problem. God is ultimately the creator of all that there is. If evil is a thing or being then God created it. If God created evil then God cannot be all good. Do you find this argument unsound?

And I rarely read systematic theology texts. They are references for thinking about issues. What I actually read is critical New Testament scholarship (history not theology) because I want to know all I can about the Gospels and New Testament documents. As much as I love science and learning, studying early Christian writings is the only intellectual pursuit worth investing my spare time in to me. Plus I am just a skeptical person by default. That makes doubts an issue for me. I don’t have near the certainty of some other Christians on certain issues.

Vinnie

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45

True. I’ve personally found the writing of Kenton Sparks on these issues helpful. In his perspective, Scripture redeems Scripture. Also there is an idea called trajectory hermeneutics or redemptive-movement hermeneutics which tries to understand the revelation in Scripture in terms of where the audience was at and what the revelation pushed them towards, not as universal mandates or revelation of absolute moral ideals. So the idea is there is this absolute idea of God’s shalom/righteous ideal/perfect justice, and the point of Scripture is to push people from where they are closer to God’s Kingdom, but the culmination will only be realized in the Eschaton.

So for example, I have a friend who worked for many years with an isolated people group in Papua New Guinea translating the Bible. It was a polygamous society in which older, wealthier men took many wives and younger men could not pay the bride price to have even one. So the younger wives of the older men would just routinely sneak off and hook up with the single guys and no one knew who anyone’s father really was because there was rampant adultery. My friend kept pointing to the Bible verses about sexual immorality and being the husband of one wife, but the elders just kind of shrugged it off as not relevant to their people, because things were different. But then something in one of the NT letters (I forget exactly what it was) about selfishness or wealth totally convicted them. The elders got together and decided that any man who already had a wife and took another just because he could afford it when there were young men in the community who had no wife was the epitome of selfishness and a grave sin. So they decided no man got another wife until every single man who wanted one had a chance to marry. The young women were much happier with this arrangement and within a generation or two, polygamy and adultery were rare. All this to say, imposing a moral rule on a culture where it doesn’t make sense to them and seems arbitrary doesn’t transform the culture. So maybe God’s revelation has been more pragmatic than we give it credit for, but it’s playing the long game. I think it’s fair to say humanity is in a better place than it was 4,000 years ago and the influence of Jewish monotheism and Christianity have played a role in shaping many cultures toward more respect for human life and human rights.

Of course many conservatives balk at the idea of a redemptive trajectory, because that means that God is still pushing us, maybe even beyond what was revealed in the New Testament. They don’t want to entertain the idea that maybe they’ve been wrong about opposing feminism, or systemic racism, or decolonization, or environmentalism, or LGBTQ inclusion, or whatever other cultural development pushing the boundaries of justice/civil rights that they’ve been against on “biblical” grounds.

Yes. The gospel writers had rhetorical goals, but honestly, all history writers do. The rules of what is fair game change from culture to culture and time period to time period, but every teller of a history forces it into a subjective narrative to some degree. You will always run into problems if your foundation for the Bible’s authority and trustworthiness is historicity, accuracy, fact-checkability, etc. The Bible reveals God’s communication with humanity and authority and trustworthiness are located in the character and work of God.

I think you are confusing terminology here. The doctrine of divine accommodation is the idea that God accommodated the worldviews of the writers and original audience of Scripture. It is in opposition to biblical concordism which tries to match facts from history and science to the biblical accounts. Hard-core Inerrancy proponents are not generally big fans of the doctrine of divine accommodation, because it allows for “errors” in the Bible. Yes, there are people who try to “accommodate” the doctrine of inerrancy to reality in very creative ways (to the point that it doesn’t mean much anymore), but that is not the accommodation I and others in this thread have been referring to.

That is a good way to put it. I agree that the Bible on its own, as a collection of ancient writings, without the continuing work of God’s Spirit in human hearts and the embodiment of Christ in the world through his church, is not “authoritative.”

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I think this is key to so much right now. [I bring this up at the risk of it being tangential to this thread.]

It may be human nature for all of us (not just conservatives, though perhaps they openly “own” it more than most) that we like stability and are threatened by change. Accordingly, we like to be in a place where “we’ve arrived” - this is it. No more addenda expected. Close the canon. Christ was the last word.

But the trouble with that is: Christ’s Word for us is a rather open-ended exhortation about how we are to live, which is never satisfied within any “set of rules” - even of the “New and Improved” New Testament sort. We’re just suppose to love God and neighbor (including enemies) - with all that that entails! That’s not very friendly to transactional-minded peoples who want some reassurance (a receipt I can shove in God’s face if I need to) that I’ve satisfied some minimal requirement (checked all the right ‘belief’ boxes on the correct creeds) to be guaranteed my spot in the Kingdom.

Conservatives, more than most - but not exclusively - like to have the safety of those reassurances. Maybe that drives biblical hermeneutics more than they would care to admit. I bet it drives a whole lot of other stuff too, in terms of typical conservative response to economic and stewardship situations etc.

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It seems to me that Christianity is by its nature conservative toward a mindset or way of living. From there it splits between those who think every realization has been made leaving only the actual living left to do in a prescribed manner while others see the way to be preserved as embodying the seeds for on going transformation. Maybe progressives are just conservatives striving for the full measure of transformation while self-identifying conservatives feel the important transformation has all been done already?

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Yes - and it’s not just Christianity; these mindsets span culture and history too, I’m sure. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes were probably the “conservatives” of Jesus’ day who would have the reaction: “Moses’ law is already clear about this … who do you think you are to be adding ‘…but I say unto you…’?!” When they can be satisfied that they haven’t, say, murdered anyone or committed adultery, they naturally don’t want to hear anyone add on: “Yeah, … about that! So you think you’re not guilty of any of these things, huh? Let me tell you what God actually thinks about your ‘innocence’…” And then proceeds to raise the moral bar so high, that you’re tempted to just dismiss him outright. It’s like thinking that a ten dollar bill would settle your debt with your friend. And then learning that you actually owe your friend $100. And to make the comparison more accurate yet - your friend won’t even tell you what would satisfy the debt. He just tells you: ‘keep a running tab open - because there is no satisfaction in sight’. And at this point our fiscally conservative selves (just about all of us I should think) are squirming mightily uncomfortably. “That’s just not how we roll around here, Jesus!”

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49

“Historians also tell us the gospel authors were not eyewitnesses but creatively shaped traditions they inherited in Greek which were already developed.”

In Acts Ch. 6 vs 4 the 12 handed over the responsibility to serve widows to others so they could give themselves to prayer and “the word.” What “the word” were they giving themselves to, do you know? Your thoughts?
Historians, some of them, believe the NT wasn’t written down for years and that what was written originally wasn’t recorded by the eyewitnesses to Christ’s life. You accept this position, apparently. What about “the word” referred to here? Do you have an opinion on what it means?

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Yet, He never says, “Go ahead and commit adultery now that you have a more modern understanding of the commandment not to” though, does He?

The tribe responded to a verse about selfishness and changed their behavior. So, that piece of the NT was relevant to their culture/understanding and carried weight in the eyes of the elders.
I don’t know what you mean by “forcing people”. How can anyone force others to love God? The verse convicted them of something they were doing that was wrong. How could anyone force them to change?

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Not written gospels. Testimony about the Good News of Jesus. The Christian message. The same thing it means in Acts 4:31 and about 10 other places in the work. I don’t doubt that much of the content in the gospels stems from an eyewitness era. I’m not convinced the institution of the of the Twelve actually meant much the few decades after Jesus died. But it’s origin during Jesus’ ministry is as close to a brute fact of history as we can hope to get in this field.

The evangelists did create some material of their own but ultimately they were shapers of inherited, pre-existing traditions. Some were more creative than others. There is some evidence of control on creativity as well. But it none the less exists.

Vinnie

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No, and that wasn’t my point. My point was the road toward God’s justice is a path and we don’t necessarily have to mandate one point on the path that was transformative for one culture as normative for all cultures. So the command to marry the female war captives Israelites took as booty (after allowing a month to grieve the fact that you killed their husbands, fathers, and brothers) was a step on the path ahead of raping the women and leaving to them to die. But it’s still far from God’s redemptive ideal and we shouldn’t bring it back as normative in our time. My assumption is that if God had said go find the foreign women who were left widows by other warring tribes, give them a home, educate them, care for their spiritual and emotional trauma, find them jobs so they can develop a sense of independence and self-sufficiency, and value them as equal human beings, they simply would not have done anything close. Yet we have Christian ministries today who, motivated by Scripture and the example of Jesus do those very things because they see it as pursuing God’s ideal justice today. That is the redemptive trajectory at work.

I mean we don’t have to mandate the same path to conviction and righteousness for all people. The conviction of sin is internal and not something that can be imposed on a culture by giving them rules. True righteousness is born out of love for God and respect for his holiness, not rule-following. I assume the rules God gave Israel worked (in cooperation with his spirit) in a redemptive way because they tapped into a cultural sense of right and wrong and sin and righteousness that was already present and they were a comprehensible way of demonstrating love for God and respect for his holiness. It’s not that sin and righteousness are arbitrary, but there are many facets to them, and every culture has good things that it is in tune with and bad things that it is blind to.

If you are church planting in the Pacific Northwest and the unchurched youth culture you are ministering to already has a deep sense of moral accountability toward their carbon footprint or working to end racial discrimination, then you should tap into those areas where they are already convicted of falling short of God’s ideal, instead of trying to get them to feel guilty about living with their girlfriend or smoking pot. It’s not saying living with their girlfriend is God’s ideal, just that their redemptive trajectory might take a different path to get closer to God’s ideal.

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Do you mean try to make progress with each person instead of expecting perfection?

How can you make them feel anything? No one controls how others feel. What happens to people who pass on to the next dimension if they are living in a sexual relationship without being married and do we have a responsibility to warn them of the after life consequences for those kinds of things?

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  1. I was mostly speaking corporately about the power of God’s word to transform cultures not about individuals.

  2. I don’t think dying while you actively have some area of sin in your life is a deal breaker and I don’t think eliminating sin from your life is what saves you. God’s grace is limitless and his mercy is unfailing.

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Do you mean they shared what God had done in them based on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the OT promises? I think that was first hand, eyewitness testimony they gave.

“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.”

I think they reviewed those matters repeatedly with one another. I don’t sense they had any doubts whatsoever about the life, death and resurrection because they were there.

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“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men…”

I don’t know what you mean exactly. Can you explain what a deal breaker is? Like, what is the deal? Who makes the deal? What are the terms?

Can we do what we choose without consequences after we die? He told people not to sin anymore. He is holy. We are bound by the law of love. Are you saying that we cant break that bond?

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I don’t think “inherit the Kingdom of God” maps perfectly on to “be granted eternal salvation when you die.”

Deal breaker in terms of salvation. I am an unabashed orthodox Protestant. I believe people are saved by grace through faith, not by works.

Yes, I am saying if someone is redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, God does not hold their sins against them and they are blameless in God’s sight. That’s all in the New Testament. I believe the process of sanctification that the Holy Spirit does in our life conforms us to be more like Christ and gives us power to live righteously. Righteousness and holy living are the fruit of our salvation, not something we do to earn or maintain it.

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They shared the good news about Jesus which was that God raised him from the dead. I don’t know which apostles Jesus actually appeared to. The “twelve” in Paul’s appearance list should be “the eleven” considering Judas had betrayed Jesus. Like I said, I think Jesus called twelve disciples in order to represent the restoration (or simply recall) the twelve tribes of Israel. I think membership might have changed slightly during his ministry and some of them may have even abandoned him before or after death. Many are just names on a list. Some most certainly did not and claimed to have witnessed him after he died.

Your version of Jesus’ ministry and mine are different. I don’t believe every supernatural feat attributed to Jesus in the Gospels is historical. I can’t imagine Judas or anyone betraying a man who walks on water, controls the weather, multiplies fish by the thousands, heals the blind, deaf, crippled, demon possessed and so forth in droves for a lousy 30 pieces of silver. That sends my BS meter to the moon. You don’t abandon this sort of “man.” You walk into the lion’s den with him. Even the dreadful Judas Iscariot.

Vinnie

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Deal breaker in terms of salvation. I am an unabashed orthodox Protestant. I believe people are saved by grace through faith, not by works.

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?

Yes, I am saying if someone is redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, God does not hold their sins against them and they are blameless in God’s sight. That’s all in the New Testament. I believe the process of sanctification that the Holy Spirit does in our life conforms us to be more like Christ and gives us power to live righteously. Righteousness and holy living are the fruit of our salvation, not something we do to earn or maintain it.

Then they inquired, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” 29 Jesus replied, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.”
Very interesting. Jesus does require that we work at believing in him, and faith without the work of believing in him seems like a dead end. Do you see where I find that type of thinking or doctrine?
Some toss away their belief in him or they give up working at it.

" Abstain from every form of evil. 23Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your entire spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24The One who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.…

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I could quote verses too, but I have zero interest in re- litigating the Reformation. Have a nice night.

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