If a literal reading of Genesis flood and destruction of Sodom and Gomorah is false, how should we explain direct New Testament references to the Genesis accounts?

Faith & Science Conversation
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122

This is perplexing

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Ok why?

Because Scripture says so?

Who wrote Scripture?

Can we truly understand (Sit in the place of) God?

What is the point of eternal life?

To quote Queen “who wants to live forever?”

Why?

If you can answer that one
 hmm

Richard

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It’s those two statements alongside of one another that confuse me: “not your place to tell others what to believe
 if you believe this you are naive and stupid”

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125

Is my opinion.

And I explained why .

Take it or leave it.

same goes for belief in The reality of the Garden of Eden

Richard

126

This reminded me of a hymn Luther wrote, with a line that stuck in my head. Th English goes “In Adam we have all been one, one huge rebellious Man”. Appropriately the melody is rather dismal in mood:

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Was it Aquinas who said that those biological urges were present before the Fall but they weren’t a problem because we were spiritually alive? That would explain that “of the flesh” indicates a deficiency, that we were meant to be of the flesh but also of the spirit and thus in balance. In that case, apart from Christ we are in a sense only “half people”, able to enjoy (and abuse) only half of what we were meant to be, and in Christ we are on the road to re-awaken and restore the missing half.

Interesting idea. And he became “Serpent. . . god of darkness and disorder” when he decided to lead Adam and Eve astray? before which he was a “shining one” and the lead of God’s servants?

I like it.

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128

Care to elaborate?

Now there’s something for me to ponder while mowing today!

129

So Paul is stupid and many of the greatest thinkers in the greatest intellectual tradition in world history (Christianity) were naive and stupid. Got it.

At any rate, all your arguments assume God couldn’t have made a free world some other way. I just assume God made the world the way He wanted. It could have had a radically different design I suppose. God can do miracles after all in my view. Things which are not possible for us in our world. We have been down this road as well. I believe he could have because it fits my conception of heaven. But you think free will is missing or severely limited in heaven. No need to go over the same ground over and over.

Not to mention I can cause physical death over and over again on a daily basis. Empirically speaking, humans causing physical death is pretty common. Not sure what the whole commotion about them starting it would be? Surely this is not rational thinking


Sounds like you will need a lot of pondering. I graciously offer you my lawn for further edification and reflection.

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Not possible since it is right there in the text. Satan simply means “adversary,” i.e. enemy, and the “snake” is made our enemy right there in Genesis 3.

Agreed. I think he became our adversary as a result of what happened in the Garden, when Eve blamed him for her mistake. I think it likely the snake was just doing the job God gave him to give challenges to living things so they could learn and grow. Adam and Eve had the answer to the challenge the snake gave them in the words of God to them. Things would have been very different if they simply had accepted the responsibility for what they did.

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No, Paul never said it.

His words ae taken out of context and misconstrued.

As for the rest


Yes, why not. Humanity is basically stupid. I guess. Especially those who think that human knowledge and learning matters to (tells us about) God.(Eccl 1: 12-18)

Anyone who knows anything about Ecology will understand.

Richard

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This is the passage from Keener

Theologians today thus often echo the more traditional historic approach to miracles, referring to them as “special divine action.” This label is meant to differentiate miracles from divine action more generally, since Christians affirm that God works in all sorts of ways around us all the time. But what is the cutoff where “general” divine action becomes “special” divine action? How do we classify, for example, an extraordinarily fast recovery from surgery?

The boundaries are fuzzy, but we can at least provide paradigmatic examples of each. By analogy, the boundary between “long hair” and “short hair” may be unclear, but most of us would at least recognize Samson’s proverbial hair as long and the hair on a mostly bald head (mine, for example) as short.

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133

That happens now, it doesn’t have to follow in the original state of blessing

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134

This reminds me of a discussion about letters we know Paul wrote but we don’t have. One guy was arguing that it would be awesome if we found some, the opposing position was that those letters must not have been inspired or God would have made sure we had them. I threw a third option in: God didn’t have them preserved because they didn’t say anything that isn’t in the ones we have.

I could argue either way. It all depends on the two big items I mentioned in a comment about worldviews: how truth is defined, and how humanity is defined. If these are defined in a materialistic fashion, as YEC does, then if Adam wasn’t real then Paul’s theology fails, but if it is defined in ancient near east fashion then it’s fine. Given that the worldview at Paul’s time was much closer to the ANE than to materialism, I’ll say it’s fine but with one caveat: a first responsible moral agent must exist.

I conceived of a sermon topic: “We’re in the Wrong Garden”. Every time I think of the Exile I remember that one of the wonders of the ancient world was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and a TV special some years ago talked about how it wasn’t just on location that was that garden, it was a large portion of the city. So the Israelites carried off to Babylon were living in a garden – just not the right one. The case that it wasn’t the right one would be strengthened if, as was common, any terraced garden inside a city was dedicated to one or another deity, as evidenced by the fact that at least some stepped zigurats had trees and bushes on the terraces (fruit-bearing ones since the concept of the garden of the gods had everything in it providing delight).

Given that the first Creation account is a polemic against Egyptian cosmic mythology, that the second one might have a similar function would not be surprising.

Romans is the closest thing to systematic theology in the entire canon, but it isn’t typical systematic theology as found in the West, it’s the kind the east does: in the east, theology tends to be pastoral no matter what other label it bears.

Generally, yes – though in my dorm when I was in college in Indiana there was a student attending a nearby university (and living in our dorm) who became fascinated listening to us talk theology. One day in early spring he came to a few of us with an announcement and a question: the announcement was that the night before he’d realized that he didn’t just find our discussions fascinating, he found that he believed; the question was actually two – “Does this mean I’m a Christian?” and “What do I do now?!”

One of history’s great theologians held this position but my memory isn’t telling me which. I know it’s not Aquinas; IIRC he didn’t consider Eden to have been a material place.

I second that – making it about sentience requires serious departure from the text.

Definitely agree here as well.

In systematic theology it would be pointed out that for God only is this not true.

Sorry, but people devote major portions of their lives to studying those things.

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135

Because God has freedom, and you said that “you cannot have one without the other”.

What are you talking about? Did you even read what I wrote? For that matter, did you even pay attention to what YOU wrote?

This has absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote, and in fact doesn’t seem to have anything to do with what you wrote.

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That is an interesting topic. If one of those letters were found I bet there would be more than one theologian sitting on needles wondering what impact they could have. It could also be just a letter written to his buddies about mundane, everyday things which would be just as interesting.

It reminds me of something I learned the other day. It turns out George Washington was a very private person. Upon his death his wife burned all of the letters they sent to one another during the Revolutionary War. One wonders about all of the interesting stuff that was in those letters.

Agreed. The more I think about it the more I am willing to accept the “it’s a mystery” argument.

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Then there are those chiasms to watch out for. I haven’t seen them myself, but I hear there are some remarkable ones to be found there.

“To determine not only good and evil, but even reality itself.”

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True. Reading the word rendered “serpent” as “shining one” we might think we can find Lucifer there, but even that’s sketchy since “shining one” would apply to a number of heavenly beings – at the very least all of God’s council.

The weird thing to me is that so many reject massive amounts of science yet they still apply a materialist viewpoint to the opening chapters of Genesis, so what they’re rejecting science in favor of isn’t scripture as what it is, it’s scripture warped by a materialist definition of truth (which is why they feel the need to prove that science actually does align with their views).

I don’t think so. I think the “futility” is that we humans were supposed to learn our way around nature and care for the Earth, but our separation from God made that impossible, thus leaving nature on its own. We were meant for it, and it for us, and without that relationship nature is sort of spinning its wheels in futile functioning.

No. God making us as His image put us in charge of the world. Even though we didn’t stay loyal, He has not revoked that “royal” office, so He (mostly) keeps His hands off things. Thus when we damage creation, it isn’t because “man [is] stronger”, it’s that man has the authority over creation and God isn’t going to overrule us.

No – scripture is where we find the “character and power of God”.

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139

I’ve heard more sermons than I would like to have heard where a preacher who only dabbles in Greek takes τΔτέλΔσταÎč (teh-TE-less-tie), “It is [now and forever completely] finished” and treat it as a matter or “poof, problem solved”. I like the illustration an Australian Lutheran theologian gave when I was in grad school: A groundskeeper has been working day after day without let-up and at last has completed a beautiful football pitch; he takes a step back and declares, “It is finished!” Hearing this, do the players clap, congratulate him, and go home? No! they cheer and get out on the field and play!

We may not add anything – indeed we cannot – to the work of salvation, but if we just sit back as though everything is solved and we don’t have to do anything we’re like soccer players who on seeing a football pitch finished to perfection pack up and go home. Christ didn’t declare “It is finished!” so we can be spiritual couch potatoes, He did so in order that we can get out there and enjoy it – and if we don’t, then just as cheering for a perfect football pitch and going home leaves the pitch wasted, so the salvation Jesus wrought gets wasted.

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That’s why recognizing that the word can be rendered as “shining one” helps. In much of the ANE serpents were looked on positively, sometimes regarded as heavenly creatures. Put this into Genesis and we see why Eve paid any heed at all to the serpent: she was accustomed to seeing heavenly creatures in the Garden.
What’s interesting is that the serpent’s actions in the Garden effectively bridge between the positive view of serpents found in much of the ANE and the negative view held by the rest: when the serpent first enters the story, we have no reason to view it/him negatively (“crafty” is not necessarily negative), but by the fifth verse that has flipped.

That’s putting it mildly.

I mow the big grassy lot across the street that belongs to the church nearby; it’s about a half acre, which provides plenty of time for pondering.

Interesting view. I encountered it once before but can’t recall just where, or for that matter when.

It’s an acquired skill.

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My suggestion was that the misuse of God’s gifts was the fall from the original state, which you call “blessing” (but me not being a believer in woo woo rhetoric like that, I just call it having those gifts before we misused them). This fall didn’t have to happen but ignoring the warning God gave Adam and Eve made this likely (“you will surely die”). Like I said, I think it was the typical warning of a parent of something dangerous, like “don’t play in the street.” I don’t agree with the common idea that it was just disobedience and God threw them out because of it, no more than we would kick out our children if they disobey our warning and play in the street. But consequences of disobedience, like our child being hit by a car is just they way the reality of being alive works. In “the garden” the danger was the misuse of God’s gifts (language and the human mind) which enabled them to blame others for their mistake (difficult for animals to do, you must admit). And that is a very bad habit quite destructive of their potential as human beings which require them to take responsibility and learn from their mistakes.

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