‘False choice’ implies ‘both’ and not ‘either or’, so in fact science facts are being taken as proof to validate scripture. Many post about science revealing the Bible and argue that the Bible is to be read in agreement with science. So, science facts provide part of the ‘lens’.
Therefore, one should believe that science facts should lead to a change in behavior and people should ascribe that change to those facts. Unless science isn’t relevant to scripture in fact and people are merely claiming it is.
For truth to have value, it must be reflected in behavior. Otherwise, it is the same as opinion.
I don’t see how the second part of your sentence follows from the first. The “both” is that one can accept scientific facts and believe the Bible. It doesn’t have anything to do with science proving the Bible.
Arguing that the Bible is to be read in agreement with science is not the same thing as arguing that science reveals the Bible. Could you point to a BioLogos post that you think argues that science reveals the Bible? I honestly don’t know what this would even look like.
Maybe so, but I don’t know that changing behavior based on scientific facts (using less fossil fuels, or eating less processed sugar, or installing soaker sprinklers) has anything to do with Scripture. What is an example of a scientific fact that informs how one obeys the Bible?
‘We believe that the diversity and interrelation of all life on earth are best explained by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent. Thus, evolution is not in opposition to God, but a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes. Therefore, we reject ideologies that claim that evolution is a purposeless process or that evolution replaces God’
I supposed by calling it God-ordained it moves it from science revealing ( I guess, I should have used ‘informs’) to ‘in agreement with’. I would take ‘best explained’ as science used to describe what the Bible is saying. Thus, science reveals ( informs or add detail to the Bible ). ‘In agreement with’ implies that both must agree, so where they appear at odds with each other then one must take priority of the other. When does the Bible trump science? When does science trump the Bible?
Let’s compare it with a marriage bond… Having absolute evidence of the trustworthiness of one’s spouse does not add anything to the marriage relationship, which already presupposes trustworthiness to begin with. However, evidence that completely contradicts this presumption of trustworthiness would severely harm the marriage covenant.
Therefore, we talk about science with relation to Scripture not in order to “gain” evidence for our faith. We talk about science because:
We love science as part of exploring God’s Creation.
Some people claim science is in irremediable conflict with the Scriptures.
Both of these reasons are completely sufficient.
As an aside, just providing dry information about scientific evidence has been shown to be a very ineffective strategy for changing behaviour. For example, many smokers completely ignore the messages on cigarette packages signifying that these have been proven to cause cancer, infertility, harm.
You might be interested in this thread from a while ago. Brad addressed this same question.
Saying the process of evolution is God-ordained follows from Scriptural truth claims, it is not something revealed by science. The Bible doesn’t talk about evolution.
“Jonah portrays a man eaten by a large fish and surviving. … The Gospels portray a man being reconciled to his prodigal son. … Revelation portrays a cosmic battle involving dragons and swords coming out of people’s mouths. … There’s a big difference between the Bible portraying something, and it dogmatically teaching the literal reality of something. … The idea that the Bible’s authority is tied inextricably to the most literal/historical reading possible is what other perspectives believe, not us.”
Revelation is literature. The prodigal son is part of a parable. They are not the same as Jonah. Of, course if you don’t believe in miracles then Jonah is just a story. But, then why believe in the Virgin Birth, raising of Lazarus, feeding of the five thousand, the resurrection of Jesus, the Spirit given on the day of Pentecost, or many other supernatural events? Saying the process of evolution is God-ordained does not necessarily follow from Scriptural truth claims. It relies on a specific interpretation - and one that will change as science changes. The idea that science’s interpretation of the natural world is or has been fixed is not true. Science continues to shuffle things about as new theories are proposed to explain observations. When did science become science? Luke was a physician and he wrote: ‘With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus’. Was he a scientist - or did science only begin in the Age of Enlightenment?
So is the rest of the Bible. What kind of literature is the question.
I do believe in miracles. I have experienced them. Whether or not I think Jonah is a story is not determined by whether I can intellectually stomach miracles. It is more about genre analysis and trying to figure out what we are supposed to take away from reading it. Designating something “just a story” implies that important or true things can only be communicated in objective historical records. I don’t really believe that. What is the difference in your mind between a parable and a story that was meant to teach truth? How do you decide that Jonah can’t be a story meant to teach truth, and it must be taken as unembellished, objective history?
I can only speak for myself, but I put tremendous interpretive weight on what is considered part of the apostolic message, the “kerygma” of the New Testament, which is also further testified in the historic creeds of the church and the writing of early church fathers. I think giving appropriate gravity and primacy to what the apostles and the early church taught as essential doctrines of the faith is of utmost importance to interpreting the New Testament well. The virgin birth is found in the earliest creeds and confessions. The fact that Jesus performed signs and wonders in fulfillment of OT prophesy was one of the major bases of the early church’s apologetic that Jesus was the Messiah. The Christian church doesn’t even exist without the atoning death of Christ, the resurrection, and Pentecost. These events are at the heart and center of everything that Luke, Paul, Peter, John, James, and the author of Hebrews were trying to communicate.
It follows from the truth claim that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe and that nothing happens without his knowledge and will. That is the a priori, not the scientific model. If a new scientific model emerges that replaces the evolutionary model, the truth claim that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe and that nothing happens without his knowledge and will will still be the a priori belief for Christians.
I’m confident that God’s grace is big enough to cover whatever misconceptions we have about ultimate reality, and I’m sure we are wrong about many things, just like every other human being is and has been wrong about many things since the beginning of time. We are accountable for what we do with the knowledge we have and whether or not we respond to the gospel.
I don’t think there is any such thing as a single, normative “biblical worldview.” There is the worldview you start with given your time and culture, and it is challenged and reshaped by the gospel and God’s revelation and it is brought into closer alignment with God’s ideals as you are conformed to the image of Christ. The gospel is not more or less effective for modern people with their view of modern science than it was for people throughout the centuries who believed the earth was flat, or the body was controlled by the balance of humors, or any other pre-modern scientific concept.
I haven’t learned a single thing about evolution from the Bible. I learned what I know about evolution from science books and science teachers. I learned what I know about God from the Bible, and from the Holy Spirit speaking through other Christians and personally illuminating my own mind.
If you believe Jesus then Jonah is historical, because Jesus said "The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:41). Of course, maybe Jesus’ audience were just not up to understanding that parts of Jonah where metaphorical so He accommodated them by allowing them to believe it was historical. Possibly, we have some testimony of those at that time saying it was partly metaphorical.
I don’t think Jonah was metaphorical, I think it was mythologized history. So even though there may have been a historical prophet named Jonah who preached to Nineveh, that doesn’t mean everything recorded about him is an objective fact. That is how the ancients wrote their histories. No one has ever given me a good reason why Jesus can’t be referring to mythologized history to make a true point. If I make a comparison between a modern historical event and the return of Odysseus to Ithaca, 1) you don’t know whether or not I believe Odysseus “was a real person” 2) you don’t know whether or not I believe the mythological event I’m alluding to is a “fact,” 3) you don’t know what people listening to me assume about the historicity of Odysseus, and 3) the point I’m making doesn’t stand or fall on the historicity of the literary allusion.
If this is what is being promoted by a group started by a Nazarene then I’m seriously considering changing denominations. How do I delete my user from this site?
While somewhat late to the party, I am realizing more and more the importance of story to what the Bible says. We tend to divide and study verses and chapters in Sunday School, and miss the big picture of what God is trying to tell us unless we read the whole story as a whole. That goes for Jonah, Job, and even the gospels and Acts. We have recently been studying Samuel, and that too makes a lot more sense when you read the story intact rather than fragmented.
I understand people who criticize theological liberals saying that you can’t just decide what you can accept from the Bible and then mold it to your image of what the Bible should be (conveniently deleting everything miraculous or “sexist” or “racist” for example.) But if you come to the Bible insisting that it has to be factual objective history and everything the Bible says has to fit some modern concept of ‘propositional truth’ or ‘fact’ seems to me to be just another way of insisting the Bible conform to a human expectation of it. It seems as equally arrogant and misguided as the liberal approach.
In a previous comment on Jonah, Scott Jorgenson said the following:
Well, as for me, I think the book of Jonah is a parabolical short story, a work of inspirational fiction to teach how God’s mercy extends beyond the borders of Israel to even the worst and most undeserving of enemies. I find that the book just reads far more naturally in that light; many interpreters including C. S. Lewis have thought so too. I’ve given several reasons for understanding the book this way previously, none of them original or idiosyncratic, and you can reference them if curious ("Narrative Theology" approach to Scripture - #50 by Relates).
So I find speculation about what really happened to the man Jonah while in the belly of the fish to be misplaced. What happened to him? Well, as the story says, the character Jonah prays elegantly, poetically and at length to God over the course of 3 days as he contemplates his fate, until God causes the fish to vomit him onto dry land; and nothing more of note (like a death and resurrection) takes place to Jonah over that period.
So I borrowed Robert Alter’s excellent translation and commentary on Jonah from the library as an ILL. So now I agree even more with Scott; the story is fabulous, not meant to be taken literally.
I don’t think it is reasonable to think Jesus had access to divine omniscience while he was in a human body. Think how easy it would have been to demonstrate his omniscience in the slightest way:
1) he could have explained fallen stars as asteroids, instead of stars. 2) he could have explained that the Earth moves around the sun, instead of vice versa. 3) he could have explained that slavery is immoral. 4) he could have explained that pork had to be fully cooked. 5) he could have explained that people become ill because of germs, not demons.
I’m baffled by the OP question. For God’s existence to be “scientifically proven” (even though only mathematics involves proving and proofs), I assume the questioner is referring to God’s existence to be confirmed by the scientific method. But that would require God to be redefined as a part of the matter-energy universe. So to “scientifically prove” God’s existence would be to REFUTE the very definition of God as the transcendent creator of the universe.
So the question is much like asking “If the existence of square circles were proven tomorrow, how would your life change?”
Could you please define what you mean by “scientifically proven”?
And why did you specify “scientifically proven” instead of something more conventional and more relevant to the topic, such as “logically proven”?
(In some cultures, “scientifically prove” means “prove according to the most advanced, modern standards.” Perhaps @tpowe (Terry Powell) is coming from another cultural vantage?)