All 3 would apply. I like your addition of plate tectonics. I still remember how wowed I was when I first came across the theory. And it is a big thorn in the flesh of any YEC.
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I couldn’t say it any better.
To use your words:
Thus the Bible does not speak scientifically. However, it does speak historically. And there’s the rub.
Given your view that we should regard Gen 1-11 as “a different kind of history” (“pre-history,” was, I think, your preferred term), what do you think is going on in Ex 20:8-11 and Ex 31:12-17? To be specific:
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Who is the author of those two passages - Moses or someone else? If someone else, who? If you don’t know who, when and where did the unknown author write?
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Is the author of those two Exodus passages regarding the six days and day of rest in Gen 1-2 as pre-history in the way that you would have us regard it? In other words, is the author regarding those passages as myth (in the best sense of the term as you understand it) and just winking at the original audience about the literary trope they all know is being employed? Or is he taking Gen 1-2 as real history and thus deceiving himself much as you would view a 21st-century YEC doing?
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Or am I confusing a literary trope with pre-history? Is there a difference?
I ask these questions to better understand you - not set you up for something.
It would be simple if the Bible only spoke historically. But it does not. It often speaks figuratively, poetically, symbolically, prophetically and even sarcastically, just to name a few ways it speaks. Sure I missed quite a few. I am not a scholar, but until you get to gospels, where Luke says, here is what happened, not sure that the Bible itself says “here is a historical account of the events” though I am sure there are some passages that do.
It is sort of interesting to look at the first verses of the various books, and compare them to Luke. Most start as “There was a man…” or something similar to how we start a narrative story.
That is not to say there is not history present, just that the history is not the point, unless it is the point.
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Continental drift fits in your category “SGH.”
Our word choices are not quite lining up, but I did have another thought. God did make a science claim, the earth does not move, that can be tested using the scientific method. I don’t think I have to provide the proof, but we know this hypothesis has been falsified and therefore the claim is false. It would probably be better if we say the Bible doesn’t teach correct modern science. The science it does teach has been corrected many times over. As a result most people just say the Bible doesn’t do science when it fact it does, just badly from our point of view.
And if it can speak scientifically badly why can’t it also speak history badly?
The Bible says, speaking historically, that there was a natural 24 hour day before the sun existed. How is this possible when a natural 24 hour day requires the existence of the sun?
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Hi Mike,
Thanks for the clear explanation of your view. It is clear to me that you hold your views sincerely, and you desire very much to please the Lord. Moreover, I commend you for your very clear articulation of your view; you have quite a gift.
I’ve skimmed the thread, so I hope my modest post does not overlook something that I should have seen. I hope you will forgive any such shortcoming.
Your list of assumptions does not include some important ideas that you have articulated.
Assumption #1: We should allow Biblical statements that have scientific content to be overruled by modern scientific discovery. Here are some examples of Biblical statements that should be overruled by scientific discovery.
- The Bible portrays the earth as flat.
- The Bible portrays the earth as immobile.
- Genesis 1 describes a raqi’a (however it should be translated) that divides two extremely large oceans of water - one above the raqi’a, and one below.
- Genesis 7 says that the raqi’a has windows (or something like them) which opened to allow the above-raqi’a ocean to flow down to the land/earth.
- Jesus stated that the mustard seed is the smallest seed.
- Revelation states that stars are small enough to fall to the surface of the earth.
Assumption #2: Accommodation should only apply to science, and never to history.
- The Torah is considered inspired in spite of the fact that it contains many statements that are erroneous from the perspective of science.
- However, the Torah could not be considered inspired if any ostensibly historical statements are in not true in the most literal sense.
Assumption #3: The fact that some of the most respected theologians in the history of the church disagree with Mosaic Creationism is irrelevant.
- Augustine
- Origen
Without these 3 assumptions, the rationale for adopting Mosaic Creationism disappears. Why? If there is a legitimate hermeneutical approach to the Pentateuch (other than MC) that is in agreement with what you have called SGH (not a term I would use), then there is no reason to adopt MC. I.e., given 2 hermeneutics (MC on the one hand, some other on the other), and one of them is in conflict with enormous amounts of science, then I should be inclined to adopt the one that is not in conflict with science.
Grace and peace,
Chris
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Gee… thanks for the moral support.
Since you have already figured it all out, what is an example of a Biblical text where Mike holds a more flexible interpretation than would a Strict Inerrantist?
I’m sure many would benefit from your insights…
We know he’s a strict inerrantist. That’s why there’s no point discussing the issue. We already know his position.
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These thoughts of yours are helpful to me. Thanks for posting them.
What makes this post so helpful is that you lay out clearly, and in some detail, how you are thinking about the matter. As for this line of thinking, its validity seems to rest on the validity of the very first step taken, which is:
If this statement is true, then indeed all that follows is reasonable. Even the conclusion:
But is that first statement true? Is it really fair to say that God makes science claims in the Bible - whether good ones or bad ones? Alas, the answer probably turns on how one defines “science” - which, as you know, takes me way out of my comfort zone. So, knowing that what I’m about to say about may be all wrong from a scientist’s point of view, let me at least tell you how I use that term when I say something like “The Bible doesn’t make scientific claims but does make historical claims.”
To me, the essense of the issue is frame of reference. The Bible speaks of physical things in terms visible to the naked human eye. Science, by contrast, through telescopes and microscopes, gives us visibility into physical dimensions invisible to the naked human eye. It strikes me, therefore, as anachronistic to say that the Bible speaks “scientifically” or “scientifically badly” (as you are saying) or “scientifically goodly” (as Hugh Ross might say, though in other words, of course). Since the Bible was written in the language of men, it cannot be expected to use a language not yet invented at the time of its writing.
One other point: the frame of reference used by the Bible (and by other texts of its age) is not made obsolete by the scientific age, for we today continue talking about sunrises and sunsets even though we are now able to talk about such phenomena in scientific language. These two frames of reference coexist, and we go back and forth between them without so much as a moment to justify the switch. The meteorologist does this every day in a weather forecast, and even talk of the upcoming solar eclipse is peppered with expressions like “America will fall under the path of a total solar eclipse,” as if the sun were traversing across a motionless earth.
Therefore, it seems very unnatural to me to say something like “God did make a science claim” or the Bible “speaks scientifically badly.” It’s imputing a frame of reference to the Bible that it did not have, and could not have had. As has been rightly said in this forum, though perhaps not in this particular thread, “The Bible was written for us, not to us.” All that said, I acknowledge that you do not see the matter this way. I am just giving you the perspective of someone on the other side of the divide - a reciprocation of your post.
To finish off, I do not think it is anachronistic at all to that the Bible speaks historically. You don’t need telescopes and microscopes - that is, you don’t need the scientific frame of reference - to speak history. You just need a witness.
But most of science is based on what we see with the naked eye. The size of the earth, the shape of the earth, the fact that the earth moves, all of this was determined by simple observations with the unaided eye. The distinction you’re trying to make isn’t valid.
The Bible speaks of the universe phenomenalistically, that is, simply the way it appears to be with a single visual frame of reference. This is exactly how other cultures of the Hebrew era spoke about the universe. So God was clearly accommodating His audience. The result is that the Bible makes statements which are phenomenalistic but which aren’t literally true, when though people thought they were literally true.
Very good! This has been my conclusion ever since he posted that he was not a Strict Inerrantist.
P.S. I wouldn’t mention this to @Christy … at least not until a badger emoticon becomes generally available!
Greetings from my side of the river.
Except the geologists that first determined the earth was very old used nothing but what was visible to the naked human eye. Science at it’s most basic is simply the process of making a statement which can be tested to determine if it is true or false. The earth is flat is such a statement that can be tested. The statement that God exists can not be tested so it is not considered to be science.
Which doesn’t preclude the Bible from making statements that can be scientifically tested. The language used doesn’t matter.
You are arguing using the personal incredulity fallacy. Just because it doesn’t seem natural to you doesn’t mean the Bible didn’t do it. And it is not a frame of reference. When someone says, “That is scientific.” what they really mean is that is a claim that has been tested and found to be true. At it’s heart that is what science means. Scientific facts are those that have been tested and verified.
I just looked back to your OP and noticed that you did not include your assumption that all of the historical statements in the Bible are true. You have certainly indicated this in your previous posts including such statements as it is easier to get history correct than it is science. This is one of your key assumptions that should be listed in the OP just so everyone is clear.
Historical claims can likewise be subjected to verification. Sometimes science is used (think medical examiner) and sometimes the historical method is used (think new versions of previously accepted history). The claim of history that the earth is 6,000 years old can certainly be tested by science. It is not history vs SGH it is just history being verified or falsified by science.
So I say the Bible makes some statements that science has shown to be incorrect. Those statements include such things as the earth is flat and the earth is 6,000 years old.
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Mike, what you are missing is that all of these are VALID ways to communicate. Without getting into the technicalities of distinguishing specific linguistic features by their academic labels, the general public calls them all “figures of speech”. And in a very real and figurative sense, Martin Luther DID “nail the 95 theses to the door of the Church”. A set of words does not have to be understood literally to communicate valid meanings which people understand. In this case the details of HOW Luther went about launching his objection to various practices in the church is not the purpose of the clause.
I know that I’m repeating what many other people have explained to you, but it really is important that you allow the language and the culture to establish the meanings of groups of words. You clearly are impassioned about how you WANT the rules of communication to operate—but it doesn’t work that way! Yes, it can be a radical concept to grasp and even feel deeply and dangerously “wrong”. But as the old saying goes “It is what it is.” Reality is reality.
Suppose that some professional meteorologist comes into work and dashes from his car into the entrance to his office and exclaims to the staff, “Wow! It’s raining cats and dogs out there!” Hopefully nobody will say, “You are a very irresponsible meteorologist! You should know better than to be so sloppy in describing a real event.” (Of course, it would be even worse if somebody on the staff said, “How dare you lie about what is happening! You are scientifically trained. You should be telling the truth about the rain.”)
Does everyone in that office understand that “raining cats and dogs” is idiomatic? Yes. Does every speaker of American English understand the meaning? The vast majority probably do. How about a visiting New Zealander or South African? Perhaps. Or perhaps not. And a Chinese exchange student learning English in America may completely miss the meaning and imagine domestic animals falling from the sky. Was the professional meteorologist “sloppy”? Not really.
Now, if anybody thinks that the Bible avoids literary structures, idioms, and vocabulary that are extremely difficult for people from other languages and cultures to understand, I hate to share the stark reality but it is what teachers do. I’ve had many Young Earth Creationists tell me “The perspicuity of the scriptures disagrees with you. The meaning of the Bible is available to everyone young and old. God wouldn’t obscure the meanings of the text!” Of course, in the first place, that is a misunderstanding of the concept of perspicuity. Secondly, that was a doctrine promoted during the Reformation that is not easy to support in the scriptures without a lot of very careful and cautious qualifications of what it does and doesn’t claim. Thirdly, obscuring the meaning of his teaching was a major component of Jesus’ ministry and that is why his disciples complained about Jesus saying things which were very hard to understand. Some of the people who major on perspicuity are arguing with Jesus. (Yes, that was meant to sound a little snarky to make a good-humored point.)
Wow! Your choice of words (likewise a little bit of good-humored snarky-ness) reminds me of a student who is trying to convince me to give him at least partial credit for an answer on a test. (Yes, I’m responding in kind—just for a little fun!) I do understand that these things are difficult for our western minds to accept. But, again, we don’t get to make the rules that govern the language and culture of an ancient people. This reminds me a bit of a student who was very outraged at hearing that some statements recorded in the Bible are basically paraphrased and not the exact words of the speaker. Other people have insisted that because the Pentateuch was called “the Books of Moses”, then Moses wrote every word—except Joshua added the Moses death addendum. There’s really not much I can do to convince them otherwise if that is their decision. Tradition is a very strong force.
Seriously, these concepts are not easy ones! Indeed, it took me many years of experience with both ancient and modern languages as well as working with much smarter linguistics professors and exegetes than I will ever be before I was at all willing to accept these ideas. So I entirely empathize with where you are coming from. (I used to vehemently argue against some of these ideas in public debates, and I am totally embarrassed to admit that that was despite having a lot of my linguistics training already under my belt at the time.)
It is also worth mentioning that one of the factors that challenged my traditional thinking was working with SIL/Wycliffe translators who were describing the kinds of translation problems they faced in cultures and languages. (They often absolutely blew my mind.) I’ll bet Christy could share similar anecdotes from personal experience. I am still sometimes tempted to think that some cultures communicate “wrongly” and surely “very inaccurately”. One of my favorites is when you visit a village and the leader tells you he is 40 but you see him again two years later and he tells you he is 50. In his culture, he is telling the truth, but one has to interpret the incongruities on their terms, not ours. His numeric age is a reflection of his status and the size and significance of his family tree, not just the tally of his birthdays. (I give such examples when I shock people with my analysis of the genealogies of the Patriarchs in Genesis. No, I don’t consider the 900+ years to be actual literal lifespans. Yet, within their cultures, those genealogies would be considered legitimate and truthful.)
Mike, based on your negative reaction to the church historian using the expression referring to the nailing of the 95 theses merely to establish context, I want to know how you react to this analog: Suppose there is a European village which is the traditional site where some Nordic or Saxon legend claims the god Woden was born. Let’s suppose the people who live there have always called their village “Wodenborn”. Does a professional historian commit malpractice when he refers to the village of Wodenborn while lecturing on some ancient Runic document he discovered in that town? And when future readers from another culture read his peer-reviewed journal article about Codex Wodenborn, a label he himself coined, will they be shocked that he would lend legitimacy to a “historical claim” that a real deity by the name of Woden was born in that village? After all, the ancient codex could be real while Woden never was. (Of course, if Woden existed in mythical respects and was widely venerated, we have to consider what we would mean by “real”. After all, Zeus is a “real” subject of legends. And some might say that Zeus is just a “corruption” in name and concept with Deus/Theos, one of the many names for God. So, by that standard, Zeus is real in a very general way because Zeus is a kind of synonym for Theos, God.)
So, Mike is any historian who speaks of Wodenborn guilty of “sloppy” professional standards? The place name Wodenborn establishes a geographical context just as “When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door…” establishes a chronological and cultural context. Neither a reference to Woden’s birth nor to Luther defiantly nailing theses has to have happened for real for these choices in wording to be valid. After all, both Woden’s birth and Luther’s nailing a document to a church door are events which never literally happened! Should historians never make such references when establishing context with an audience?
And yes, whether we happen to like it or not, the Bible contains many similar phenomena. And yes, if I could take a time machine back to a much younger me as a dogmatic (even downright cocky) young Assistant Professor and explain my interpretations of Genesis 1, my younger self would certainly call me a “liberal”. He would say that I’m guilty of “laughably complex excuses” and loads of special pleading logical fallacies, surely meant to diminish the absolute authority of the scriptures! My objections would probably be similar to many of yours.
I have often asked myself how I could convince my younger self of all sorts of things. Frankly, I doubt that shortcuts are possible. I think it was inevitable that I had to spend many arduous years learning about unfamiliar cultures—and their strange ways of looking at the world and expressing those perspectives in their complex languages—before I could change from that 26 year old know-it-all to my present self who realizes that I know a lot less than I used to.
It is difficult to write about these topics without sounding like a condescending academic. And that is probably because we have a long tradition within the American evangelical and fundamentalist community (a tradition with roots in the Reformation itself) of giving the impression that everyone’s personal interpretation of the Bible is equally (or almost sorta kinda equally) valid. How many of us grew up in Sunday School and home Bible studies where everyone in turn read the next verse of a passage and explained “this is what it means to me” or even “When I read this, God revealed to me that…” How dare any smug Bible scholar—and probably a Bible-denying liberal at that— declare some of those interpretations valid and others invalid! Yet, in linguistics as well as in many aspects of hermeneutics, some opinions are correct and others are incorrect, just as applies to a biology exam or a music theory test. And some people’s positions remain incorrect not necessarily because the Bible student is defiantly misinformed but because there is a mass of fundamental concepts and volumes of evidence unknown to them. It is the Kruger-Dunning Effect that tends to plague us all at some point in our lives. While accepting that only well-trained engineers should design our bridges and only intensively trained physicians should remove our diseased spleens, we nevertheless pull out a Strong’s Concordance and defy the professional Bible translators by declaring (even preaching from pulpits and on the radio!) “Listen closely as I tell you how your Bibles should have translated this passage.” Even PhD professors who should have known better can fall into this trap, as far too many of the leaders of the anti-gender-inclusive Bible movement illustrated when they casually but confidently drafted “procedures for properly preserving gender distinctions in Bible translations.” (It got absolutely crazy and almost silly. I saw eye-rolling and face-palms from almost every linguist and missionary Bible translator I knew.)
Nobody learns quantum physics in an afternoon. And nobody can bridge cross-cultural hermeneutical and exegetical obstacles in a few paragraphs. Most of all we have to put aside our western assumptions of how an ancient people must go about expressing themselves.
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As you’ve noted, the issue is that Mike is afraid of the consequences of any of his assumptions being untrue. For him, if Moses isn’t the writer of the Pentateuch then the Pentateuch can’t be relied on. That’s why his posts are full of language describing what he sees as the dangerous and fearful implications of views other than his own.
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Chris, thanks for reading the OP and for constructing your post using its terms. It’s been helpful to my thinking. Here are my responses to your proposed “assumptions” one by one.
I don’t hold this assumption because I don’t believe the Bible has scientific content. On the contrary, I believe it would be anachronistic of us, and - if can borrow a concept from you and Walton - culturally insensitive, to suggest that it does.
As for the issue of science, I deal with it in the first “Stipulation” of the OP:
Therefore, because I don’t hold this assumption and because the essential point you’re wanting to make - especially in your bullets - is already addressed in the OP, I’ll leave it as is.
Your definition of “accommodation” is based on your view that the Bible speaks a deficient form of science. You are not accepting these ancient Scriptures on their own terms. You are imposing modern Western intellectual paradigms on pre-modern writers. As has been rightly said, “The Scriptures were written for us, not to us.” To assume that it’s trying - however feebly - to address the scientific concerns we have is to be anachronistic. I don’t think this way about the Scriptures and therefore don’t carry the assumption here that you are proposing.
I think here you have indeed hit on something that would be useful to add to “Assumptions” of Mosaic Creation in the OP. I’ve already inserted it as assumption “2.a.” I did, however, need to modify the wording as it didn’t accurately describe me the form you originally proposed it.
Thanks again for your helpful post.
A great discussion of how even amongst the cream of the cream of Church History and Theology - - Strict Inerrantism is virtually impossible to adhere to in academic discussions - - let alone general discussions about academic topics!
(Another Keeper! << I’m using the tag “Keeper” as a way for me to find again texts that I thought made particularly good points, or contributed a “particularly good point discussed particularly well” !
In fact, I’ll go one more step: GB:Keeper. That should help keep avoid “spillover” from posts that use the word “keeper” as God intended! 
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From Mike’s comments: “I don’t hold this assumption because I don’t believe the Bible has scientific content. On the contrary, I believe it would be anachronistic of us, and - if can borrow a concept from you and Walton - culturally insensitive, to suggest that it does.”
As you can see, Mike is hoping to use the phrase “culturally insensitive” to defend his insensitive position. Ironic, yes?
Mike has been making hay about whether it is reasonable for the Bible to use terms about the Earth not moving - - and focusing on the fact audiences (modern or ancient) casually use language that is archaic, but plainly understandable (like the idea that it is the sun going up or down, rather than the Earth rotating daily on its axis.
But when it comes to the scriptures on the earth not moving, I tend to be moved by the general idea that the writer had no inkling that there was even another way of writing such things.
I have been proposing that these ancient statements were no intended cosmologically … but were firmly linked to the idea that the ground the scribe and his readers stand on does not move - - except, perhaps, at the whim of Yahweh when it is part of wrath (selective or general).
So, if we set aside the idea that all the verses about the Earth not moving is actually a genuine reference (vs. a slang reference) to the scribe’s belief the earth (i.e., the ground) was immoveable. In fact, if we reject this third category out of hand, it remains to be clarified what exactly the scribe or scribes is actually writing about! After all, what’s left to consider?!?!?
So from the frying pan into the fire. To clarify: non-upper case ‘earth’ = the ground, not upper case Earth = all the regions of the mortal realm, including the oceans.
For now we are facing a biblical contradiction with a very new scientific discovery - - the constant movement of the continental plates.
@Mike_Gantt may insist that the Bible isn’t presenting science (which most of us have actually posted in general agreement at least once in the last year) - - but the Bible is certainly presenting observations of the natural world which are general misconceptions or errors - - not addressed or corrected by Divine Inspiration.
Full Stop.
End of Story - End of History.
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