SUMMARY - PART 2A
Dynamics of Biblical inspiration and their implications
Hi all,
I won’t guild the Lilly too much on this one. This post will be me critically analysing the key ideas that have been put out in this thread in response to one of my two original grievance issues I brought up:
that God as creator obviously knew how the world was made and despite having the ability to communicate this, even to an ancient world, choose not to. He instead used stories that we understand were not factually true so that they could sound similar to other stories around in the part of the world the Bible originated from at the time, enabling easier reception to the original audience. I took issue with this as odd, very unsettling and casting all kinds of doubts on all kinds of things. Connected to this are the topics of the nature of inspiration, how we understand Genesis, the historicity of Scripture and purpose of Scripture and related topics.
This post is extremely personal for me. My faith, to be frank, is truly hanging on a few threads at the moment as I’ve been wrestling with all this. Yesterday I received in the mail the fascinating book “The believing primate” which is an Oxford published book where biologists, psychologists, theologians and a few others examine the whole concept of religion, in the light of evolution. It’s a book I ‘need to read’ with where I’m at right now … but I kinda know where it’s going to lead me. Sigh.
I’ve decided to more or less not hold back in what I say below. I mean no offence to anyone if it all comes across a bit raw.
Analysing:
1a. God spoke in the Bible in such a way that would make sense to the ancient people who were the audience. God therefore was not focussed on communicating in a way that would relate to us in the 21st century with our codes of thinking, knowing that we would later develop further as a human race to better understand why he spoke like he did at the time
Obviously this is a big key idea to respond to. People had some good comments about this that I’ve really considered. I guess for me what gets to the heart of it, is whether God wanted to convey actual factual truth about the physical world or not, and it would seem he didn’t in the Genesis account. Obviously there is more to it than that but that is part of it.
I know when considering this topic for me, having an analogy to bounce off is going to help. It’s certainly hard to come up with something of a modern day analogy to something like this … so an imaginary scenario was the closest thing I could do. Bear with me here as it is a little different … but I’m hoping as it sinks in … this short story allegory might be helpful:
** Allegory - the Proto Humans on Eiona **
It’s the year 2954. Since about the 2600s, humans have in earnest been spreading out across the galaxy. Governmental restraint on certain operations of the rich has become virtually impossible at anything more than a localised level, meaning what happens in the outer reaches is near impossible to police.
One company valued at multi quadrillions (1000 trillions) has had a secret operation running for a few generations now. They have set up a large colony on a distant moon. Using undisclosed methods that manipulate the speed of cells’ mitochondria processing, they have managed to vastly speed up the evolutionary processes. By this method, and with much human selection along the way, they have managed to evolve a relatively primitive human like species at incredible speed.
These ‘proto humans’ have no idea who created them. Their understanding of time is vastly different to ours; one of them can be born and live a full life in only 18 months, yet how they process and think is essentially the same as us - only faster. Over time, the proto humans have expanded and split off into multiple groups.
The company who set up the operation watch and see how their creation make sense of their world and their origin. Different origin stories start to arise, much based around an unseen power that drives and grows. The proto humans seem to have an innate sense of this and it is fascinating how they spiritualise it. Notably, very few animals have been created alongside these proto humans but the ones that have been made, are heavily referenced in the origin stories.
This whole area is incredibly fascinating for the company to observe. In the end, these ‘creators’ decide to carefully craft a story, not dissimilar to those that different groupings of the proto humans had come up with themselves, about origins.
Fascinatingly, a real human is able to ‘appear’ to these proto humans and the reactions they receive are amazing. These ‘appearances’ have been strictly limited and in delivering the origin story, the company was careful to strike the right balance between outright appearing (or theopany to the minds of the protos) and allowing the protos to think they had come up with the ideas supplied.
This story provided by the company hints at their being an “exalted group” of creators who made the proto-humans. Most of the rest of the crafted story fits in with the culture of these partially advanced proto humans.
The actual facts - the humans race travelling to the Kenarix region of the Milky Way in the year 2523, there being a megalomaniac ex leader of the prime colony, Mastaris Drune who went totally rogue, there being a small civil war on planet Marsharna that ended with Drune taking a third of the colonists on the planet into exile are totally unknown. Likewise that Drune had discovered new technologies and then with his scientists began the process of super evolving the protos on the secret moon called Eiona - these proto humans know absolutely nothing about.
*The Mastarisians (who live on a different part of Eiona) have a whole comedy program about it - it’s pretty hilarious actually. *
The Mastars have been working on this secret project for nearly 250 years. Of course, they know that, overtime, their creation will start to get more advanced and actually begin to realise more of how they came about. In line with this, the company know there are certain elements in the proto humans that can be reverse engineered that will point to this.
They have sent various ‘prophets’ in here and there, for different reasons, some experimental, but none have substantially updated the origin story (that said, a small group who called themselves the Lucifolds did try and get all righteous and let them know what was going on … but they were quickly subdued before too much damage was done. Fascinatingly, echoes of this attempt have merged with the protos origin story which made the whole thing more interesting.
** End **
Okay, so there you go. A sci-fi based allegory. Obviously there are many divergent points where the allergory wouldn’t hold up against traditional perspectives but I write it as a way to “reverse analyse” our situation (and yeah I got a bit carried away ha).
I think it is indeed fair to say that the proto humans in this imaginary scenario are gonna feel some pretty big and weird emotions once they realise how they actually came to be. The progenitors (ie the company, the creators) definitely could have told them how they came to be. They could have sent someone down with a clearer explanation. But they didn’t and so all manner of confusion - and wars etc break out over the proto humans development between their growing nations. The protos would be bitter and angry at the company - quite possibly wanting to find them and hold them accountable by some means - “look at all the suffering you caused, and why?”.
I think the argument that the progenitors “were only focussed on speaking to the early generations in a way they would understand“ when they gave the origin story … is not going to cut it for the more developed generations of proto humans years later. Especially considering the actual origin story was only given to a tiny group of them, the Ionzites.
(Side point: For anyone who has seen the movie Prometheus, there’s some interesting cross over in parts here - when the humans go out to find the ‘Engineers’ (who evidently made another much more nasty very non human species as well as them).
Indeed there are so many questions and issues that flow from this scenario. I genuinely think it is a helpful one to keep in mind when considering this key idea.
My conclusion then, at present - is that this argument in 1a. doesn’t hold water on so many levels. If God is indeed committed to revealing himself and truth to mankind, why not do so more progressively in a way that matched our ongoing development … like a parent would? I suppose some will answer “He did and the end point was Jesus” … but I personally don’t think that argument holds out when scrutinised. For example - why has clear revelation essentially stopped after Jesus? “cause he’s the prime and only real main revelation we need” I hear someone say, to which I answer “well, the fact revelation stopped, kinda abruptly, around 1900 years ago is totally not helpful … we really could have God’s guidance and revelation on a bucket load more issues … one of which being how we truly came about, ie the fact we evolved, it was pretty nasty just to ‘stumble’ on that knowledge”.
Indeed the “only revealed in a way they could understand at the time” argument has strong parental overtones - such that the other side of the coin of this argument is “well, why did God only show us something us human toddlers (and then only to a tiny group of Hebrews, ‘special’ toddlers if you will) and then when we got to about the collective human development age of about 11-12 years old, just leave us to figure out the rest? I emphasise again, in the process of ‘figuring out the rest’, God has allowed us to ‘stumble upon’ the actual truth of evolution- ie a very different story to what we had believed. God didn’t give us any prior warning. How this does not feel like getting a stone instead of bread, you can tell me cause I can’t see. Biting into evolution, it ain’t soft and delicious like bread - it’s a stone. A cold, lifeless, non digestible (and spiritually very innutritious) stone.
If anyone has seen the Netflix Movie ‘I am mother’ - there are some overtones here too with all this … when the main character finds that jawbone in the kilm. To reference another movie - when people on the movie ‘The Island’ realise there’s a whole other world out there, or when Neo discovers the Matrix. All of these are horrible, massively confronting revelations for the characters in those movies and I feel realising we evolved rather than were created in the way that was believed for 1000s of years is like that. Like I said in my original post, I feel this experience is probably like thinking your origins were via one family to then find out you’re adopted.
To the logic of the argument “God revealed to them only what they could understand” cannot we also say “well, if God was like that to them - why did he leave us to just ‘stumble’ on evolution without telling us?”. You’d think a loving parental figure by virtue of speaking to the early Hebrew folk how did, would also be of such a character to tell us - to tell someone, anyone - how we actually came to be.
So, at this present moment (it could change, sigh), I reject this argument, wholesale. It doesn’t hold up … and I challenge anyone to counter these points above. I ideally hope not to hear ‘more of the same‘ (the reason I went to the effort of doing the summary was to point out everything that has been said already so I’d appreciate the same things not being said again haha). If anyone feels they need to phrase things differently to capture a different angle than has been depicted already, please go for it. I just ask, humbly and with a weird kind of desperation almost (this is my faith hanging on here) please engage with the specifics of my arguments.
Analysing:
1b. The story of Adam & Eve (and by extension much of the Bible) uses metaphorical language to explain deep truths and is not meant to be understood as fact like we understand fact
This key idea I relate to and resonate more deeply with than 1a and in this, there is a lot of overlap with key idea 1c. It’s the finger prints, it’s the voice, it’s the person of God I want though - not just humans reflecting and responding in a “spiritual” way.
What I mean by saying this is - if scripture is full of metaphorical language that explains deep truths about the human condition - it creeps into the territory of the Iliad and of other people’s ancient stories rather than actual, factual hard truth. And by doing so - how can we make a real distinction (except for personal subjectivity) about how to discover the real truth?? Ultimately we humans just end up facing ourselves in the mirror when we think about “God” here. I don’t want that and I don’t believe that - I believe there is something, someone higher … although I wrote that line about a week ago and even since then, my belief in this has diminished now … but it is still there. I just think traditional concepts of it are, basically, not correct. I’m still a Christian with the imprint of the cross on my heart but on this Pilgrims progress of mine … I’ve now wandered into a pretty dark land … not unlike the elephant grave yard in the Lion King and I can certainly hear the jackals calling. Is God still my shepherd here? Or is the thought of having a shepherd just a sense of safety that even enabled a confidence to come and explore this land? This land I might now get stuck in? Certainly I can’t see how I’ll make it back to the prime right now. The sun is down and I don’t see it rising that’s for sure … I feel like the rest of my life will be spent in a shadowy kind of darkness after thinking through all these things. A never ending night. The daylight of my innocent beliefs is gone. But who knows - the sun may well rise again and it will be particularly special if it does
(I’m going on a bit I suppose but the nature of such emotions isn’t always near. In my ‘lamenting’ - I’m comforted by the memory that many in the Bible - King David being a prime example but certainly others, Obadiah being another, did have large sections of complaint, of sadness, of expressing how they truly felt … so God, I’m expressing how I truly feel here …).
Sigh. Cutting in to an earlier bit of this write up here, I’m seriously having to ask questions like “what is truth? What actually is the Bible? And how is it truly and genuinely different from other people’s ancient scriptural texts? Like really - how? Because it is ‘inspired by God - the one and only true God?’ - this God who decided not to make any super clear distinguishing features to his ‘actual’ revelation (aka the Bible)? It is a pathetically weak argument to say “my version of the truth is true … um, because my version, um, says it is true! Yes, that’s right”.
Sounds like a primary school argument between 7 years olds, 6 years olds even. But that is kind of what we’re left with … if we except the idea that Bible is metaphorical and primarily not literal but is despite this, still true over and against other ancient religious scriptures. More holes than Swiss cheese.
I’d certainly posture that the Bible is deeper and maybe in the sense of it being ‘deeper’ therefore ‘truer’ than other texts (I’ve read part of the Koran and, with respect for another religion here - it came across to me as a lot of kinda random like sayings one after the other … without a narrative coherence to it but that’s just me. Certainly, it wasn’t a story. I’ve read small parts of other ancient scripture (can’t find it now but I think it was some ancient Hindu scripture or something - anyway, it was actually quite beautiful and I distinctly remember it talking about “the one true God” and how virtuous he is and how is sustainer and things like that. I remember thinking “this sounds like parts of the Bible!”.
So I certainly don’t reject this key idea - I embrace it, as I can see some very deep truths in the Bible communicated by it - deeper even than if I try and see the early part of Genesis as historical.
But then - how do I explain the actual historical inaccuracies (or what are generally postulated fo be inaccuracies) written down in our Bible. For example, ones to make Abraham look amazing fighting off that huge Babylonian army in Genesis 14 … I mean, hmm. There’s that and there’s - basically everything outlined in the last 10 minutes of episode 100 of the ‘Bible for Normal people‘ podcast.
Here a “totally pure and heavenly” sense of all the deep truths the Bible begins, in my mind, to break down. In the growing debris, a picture forms of how there is a clear agenda in parts of the Okd Testament, saying how special and awesome the people of Israel were and using essentially untrue stories to back this up. I mean look at all the awesome stuff Abraham and then Moses did.
This apparent bias in the Bible skews and pollutes a kind of “pure revelation to all of man kind” perspective this key idea is in many ways based on.
There’s this and then there’s the related argument “well, maybe ‘deep truths’ are also found - perhaps even better and lore clearly articulated without the bias of political agendas in other ancient holy writings. Did God ‘inspire’ those too? Or do we draw the boundaries of heavenly inspiration around our own scriptures (harking back to the 6 year olds in the school yard)? If we don’t … where and how do we draw the boundaries??
On this I wrote back in Post 13
Another interesting quote in this direction was
P15
1c. The Bible is man’s (humanely fallible) way at trying to communicate eternal truths and [sub idea to this point] is done in the context of God being accessible and awareness of his existence being felt in a deep way by all. This said, awareness of God can only be communicated via human means and is therefore bound by the restrictions of communication in time and place
Well, basically everything I said in 1b is covered here. I’m leaning very much to 1c. being what I’ll be running with for now …
1d. God actually has put clues about creation having occurred by evolution- obviously these could only be vague clues as they could not have been understood by the original audiences but they are still there and it is also our duty, joy and privilege to find out the truth rather than just have it told to us
I’ve addressed some of this above in my relatively brief discussions with @gbob and @Jay313. The logic of this key idea also connects with the above ones, perhaps especially with some of the things in 1a.
Certainly one of BioLogos’ entire main key ideas is that, just as scripture says “he knits us together in our mother’s womb” isn’t actually some hands knitting us together per se but natural biological processes, so the story of God creating us humans in general and Adam & Eve specially, could be a general picture of God creating humans and that this can be - that it is in BioLogos’ view - God working to knit humanity together by the natural means of evolution. Simples (I.e. no stress).
This whole argument then at this point takes an off ramp to the issues all raised in the key ideas of point number 2, so refer to that those points (in the next forthcoming summary instalment) for more on this
1e. Explaining how all things were created was not a priority for God
I think the original reference to this was the fact that God spoke at more length in scripture about rules about grains and goats than he did about actually how he made the world.
I generally agree however would point out that there certainly are multiple references to God creating the world, with some further slightly specific details dotted through scripture besides in Genesis - e.g. in the Psalms, in the earlier part of Proverbs quite a bit, and here and there in the major prophets with occasional phrases like “he lays out the heavens like a sheet” etc. Still, the total sum of all these references might add up to maybe 4-5 bible chapters, not much compared to other topics up for discussion in scripture. While I’m here, I note that it would be an interesting exercise to correlate and compare the various references through the whole Bible about creation and deduct a picture. I’m sure someone could link an article in on that.
Certainly though, there is never a clear reference - anywhere - to evolution, nor to there being billions and billions of years of time in the universe from starting point to now. Nor are there any special clues about such things as multiple galaxies, gravity, supernova, black holes, bacteria or DNA. God knows about all these super cool things and will spend bulk chapters on prophecies about ancient nations not around anymore but who discussion about has been immortalised forever (and which includes some comments and prophecies - I wince to say - that I understand never even came about (the Gog and Magog stuff) … yet does not reveal actual interesting and later verifiable facts about his creation. Great, thanks. Doesn’t that seem really odd? Isn’t that like … sad? We have to really start to lower our expectations of ‘God’ when we start to realise such things, well, that’s how I’m feeling anyway. It’s like a kid who thinks their Dad can do anything when their going to later realise, ah, maybe not. At least it feels a bit like that.
I’m sounding super facetious here but I mean it. Us humans we have to start realising such things and asking ”God, what the?” If he is God - he can take it! Take it like a man, take it like a God. That is, unless God is Man and Man doesn’t want to take it. I hate the thought but it’s properly surfacing right now. I’ll probably end up taking that “thought captive” to quote Paul but it’s a wily one.
In all this (ranting here? Yes, sorry) I feel we should feel comfortable to ask the “Why God”
questions. “Why God did you tell us about ancient this and not that?” I think is fair. If God is Abba - Dad, well a child who feels comfortable enough to call their father ‘Dad’ is comfortable enough to ask such questions.
Before I finish on all this prior to getting into the next key idea, I want to mention something else. In my job, I do a lot of reading over other people’s work and make corrections about spelling (ha, I know mine through this thread hasn’t always been best 
), about phrasing and generally about how to correctly convey a strong, clear message to the reader. In all this, I often have it in mind how something will be read and understood by future workers who didn’t know necessarily about the specific context of the here and now. Our department has in fact been pushing for sometime now about the importance of clearly recording decisions and rationales in our system at a point in time, so it can be understood later. Before I sign anything - I need to feel comfortable with it. I won’t just sign anything - if I do, it’s basically me saying “this meets my standard and I’m okay with it”.
I suppose one way to look at the concept of the inspiration of scripture is that humans, with the Holy Spirit inside/around them guiding, wrote the words but by virtue of inclusion in the canon, God has ‘signed off’ on it. I know the picture is not that clear cut but there has to come a point where we get real and say “okay, if we believe this is ‘God’s word’, well then obviously as a minimum God has seen it, read it, is more or less happy with the phrasing, happy with the generally understood take away meanings including how it could be understood in the future by people who didn’t know the context at the time, etc. There are so many implications of this it would almost need another thread to explore them all - but my main point in pretty much everything I’ve written here is that scripture leaves me with a profound awkwardness and sense of almost embarrassment. It does not leave me with a sense of jaw open awe, which the scripture itself says is what God is jealous for and often aims for in his dealings.
1g. At the end of the day, trying to understand the tensions and apparent contradictions of how science and scripture interact is not something we will eventually ‘figure out’, at some point we just need to accept that and move on while still holding on to faith
So here we are, at this fun point. You know what this key point feels like, it feels like ‘barleys’ in the old game of chasey. In primary school (and maybe a bit in high school) I and many others used to love playing chasey. Running away from the person who was “it” in a big group was so much fun. Then there was reverse chasey (or whatever it was called, I forget), where each time a person was touched by the person who was “it”, they too became “it” and chased down all those who were not “it”’until one person was left. Those trying to avoid the growing number of people who were “it“ would have certain safe zones to run where they could call out “Barleys!” and be safe from being tagged. This argument feels very much like this “Barleys” or “Time out”.
My thoughts in response are
“Sure. Stay there, it’s good not to by blown around by all kinds of ideas …but also, c’mon now”.
Sometimes we do need to run away from some big and scary idea running after us. Sometimes we enter a “barleys room”, so to speak, from one door and instead of going back out that door to face that scary idea again, we go out another door. Avoidance, dressed up in smart clothes. Dressed up in religious clothes, scented with myrrh if you don’t mind.
Sometimes avoidance is okay. But for me, those big scary ideas will just come round a different way and find you again. Are we just going to keep running from them? I guess in many ways, many of us can live our whole lives this way. Running into Barleys rooms away from things we don’t want to confront or don’t want to be tagged by. It gets hard though … it is convenient in many ways, but also is a weird way to love and a tad soul destroying. I’m very much talking to myself here, but I think also to a general ‘human experience’ I imagine many can relate to.
For me right now, the scary thing pursuing me is called Occam’s Razor of logic. It has in fact totally caught up with me and I’m in its grip. It’s confronting, but it’s good. I want the truth - I want THE TRUTH. I don’t want make believe - stories, excuses, confusion. I want real.
I’m embracing Occam’s Razor these days … and thus I’ve been shaving off a whole of stupid theories and sub theories because of it. I’m not going to hide in the Barleys Zone anymore - Occam Razor come get me and make me a better and more sensible, grounded person. I see much much less of God and much much more humanity as it cuts away at me.
Can I ask that you please watch this short video (it’s pretty funny I think)? Please especially consider the part about how people had to try and come up with all manner of crazy theories to try and make a geocentric model of the solar system work.
So much of the essence of trying to reconcile evolution with all its implications to scripture has, for me, felt so much like this …
Occam’s Razor
My goodness. Ahh, that was a good laugh. I’m intrigued by who these fellow tome makers are. Nonetheless, I am aware I’ve got to tone down the tomes