[quote=“adamjedgar, post:20, topic:56942”]
How do you explain the fall of mankind into sin and the need for salvation, then the restoration of mankind back to sinless existence? [/quote]
I’m not sure what this has to do with what you quoted me as saying. I think we have need for salvation. The fall seems like an actual event to me but the Biblical story does not look like a historical retelling of things.
Sin leads to death and bad things. I accept that theme.
The question is whether or not the account is historical. You are treating every aspect of the Bible as if finding some well the Bible talks about also proves the talking snake in the garden was real. That is fallacious reasoning.
It’s better than reading it from a modern worldview – that totally distorts the message by introducing alien thought.
You are 180° wrong: it is only once the meaning of the text has been found that decisions can be made. To do it otherwise would be like trying to assemble a piece of furniture from IKEA without the instructions, a picture, or even a notion of what it is. If you make decisions before knowing what the intended message was, you’re not reading, you’re using the text as an excuse to justify your own thoughts.
In much there are at least two layers, each one coming from an editing of the text. Sometimes it’s impossible to get past a redaction to what came before, sometimes it is. And given that the text is canon, the meanings in the layers are intended.
If we get any of it at all!
And flat-out contradicts the Law in so doing. A lot of sermon effort has gone into avoiding that fact.
This is part of incarnational theology: while the epitome is the Incarnation itself, the principle holds throughout: God works through humans as they are, so everything He does is flavored by the humans He chooses. This fits with what Paul says about prophecy, that the spirit of a prophet is subject to the prophet; i.e. it is up to the prophet how and often when to deliver a message. And God does not do divine downloads to add information except in exceptional circumstances, what Paul calls the “gift of knowledge”.
I don’t think God chose people on the spur of the moment, either. He chose Moses as an infant, and also Jeremiah, which suggests that their entire lives were preparation for what they would say – something quite evident in Paul’s letters as they show signs of not just rabbinical but Greek education. Inspiration is thus not a sudden event but a prolonged movement until the moment comes to write – and even that moment is chosen by the writer; I highly doubt that God had a preset schedule for when Paul would write each letter.
And that fits with Paul’s “work out… for God has worked”, and his assertion that God has prepared good works for us to do: we decide, but it is nevertheless God at work – or as Paul put it, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”. This is best described by a risky theological term, “synergy”, that our good works, indeed our lives, are both our work and God’s.
Agreed – but I also agree with a commentator on Barth, that if anyone reads it honestly “like any other human work” the message comes through (related to what the early church meant by inerrancy: the word will do its work).
Origen’s essay on the different (levels of) meaning of the term “word of God” is illuminating. His view can be sort of summed up by saying that the farther removed from Christ, the less apt the label is – so scripture can be called the word of God since it teaches of Christ, but it is not all equally the word of God since it speaks directly sometimes but indirectly often; and sermons can be called the word of God insofar as they point to Christ. So insofar as words about God partake of Christ, they may be so labeled (carefully).
Though the amount of material that scholarship has been deluged with over the last century – which keeps increasing – gives us such a thorough picture compared to what we did have that scholars can’t really keep up. Fifty years ago, a Semitic scholar could be familiar with all the relevant ancient literature and all the work being done in studying it, but that is no longer true. A hundred years ago a good theologian could be familiar with everything we knew about the Old Testament and most of what we knew about the new – that was a time when it was assumed that every pastor must be a theologian, but that stricture really can’t apply any longer given the flood of knowledge. Even so, it is possible to grasp enough to have a reasonable facsimile of an ancient Israelite in one’s head if, as several scholars have noted, one spends just five to ten minutes a day learning.
And when. There are terms which shifted sufficiently in meaning that in a matter of a half dozen generations they came to be essentially opposites. My favorite example is from English: in 1600 A.D., “He prevented them into Jerusalem” was a perfectly good sentence that meant “He went before (in time) them into Jerusalem”, but by 1800 “prevent” rather than meaning “go before” meant “keep from ”.
In discussing the use of the term by Origen and others we used Word, Word’, Word", Word’" for Christ and then levels of communication about Christ in the scriptures, and lower case for anything outside (though some argued that doctrinal statements by councils should get an upper case).
Unfounded generalization: archaeological evidence supports only what it directly addresses. When we find ostraca with messages that show an enemy advancing steadily on Jerusalem, those ostraca validate the Bible’s message that that enemy had advanced on Jerusalem – but that does not validate any other historical assertion.
What we should take away from the fact of substantial verification of many events (and people and places) in the scriptures is not that the scriptures are a collection of something like objective news reports, but that it is reliable in its message – but if you call something historical writing when that isn’t what it was written as, you have stepped outside the trustworthiness because you have betrayed the author’s intent.
I will have to check out the video. But in general this is how I now read the Bible. Accomondationism has lead to a deeper love of the Bible than I’ve ever had but it’s also lead to me taking any facts with a grain of salt. Wars, kings, miracles, are all taken as maybe. I don’t think the point of the Bible is doctrinal or historical or scientific facts but how to place love above all which is quite difficult. There are people who I dislike so much I’ll celebrate their deaths as a holiday for the rest of my life. To where they could be on fire and I would not piss on them to put them out. So the only way I can love them is to let them know the door to any kind of interaction with me is shut off and if pushed the only solution may be to physically change their mind. Some argue that we should not be like act, but go out of our way to intervene in their suffering to make it lighter. But honestly I treat it like god treats mass shootings.
I see it as being real because it is presented to us that way through a normal reading of language. Its quite easy to tell when bible passages are meant to be read prophetically, historically, or metaphorically. Its really not hard to do that.
For example, we know the story of Ananias and Saphira is true because we know that the apostle Peter was a real man…there’'s history there. We know that king Hezekiah was real, because we have archeological evidence of the tunnels he had built. We know that Pontius Pilate existed because there are evidences for his existence. We know Abraham really existed because of the family lineages in the narrative associated with him all the way down to the time of Christ.
this is the problem with alternative views…they are only able to make the claims that it isnt real history by ignoring a normal reading of language and explaining away the narrative.
The problem is, you cant explain away biblical history for figures such as Hezekiah, Herod, the apostles, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, Jehu (Black Obelisk of Shalmanessar)…there is so much evidence linking all of these individuals together that we cant pretend they arent historical.
The problem is, when one studies the history and then considers the genealogies…one has a great problem trying to claim that later/more recent figures in the bible are real and the earlier ancient ancestors are not real history!
When we add to the above the entire reason for the physical death of Christ on the Cross…any claim that is allegorical detracts from the significance of the Plan of Salvation…its becomes a pointless exercise in nothing more than a book of morality. I can already reference the atheism claim that social science proves that morality did not come from God, it came from evolutionary social experimentation…so given that, what then is the point of Christianity for individuals who do not see the bible as a real historical account from start to finish…a story of morality? Thats absurd…it isnt needed for the atheist to be good according to social sciences. That means that basically many here are believing in a God that doesnt historically exist.