My agenda is for Evangelicals to have a more cognitively elaborate and and realistic view of Creation. I would say this is the BioLogos agenda as well.
I do not pursue this with the idea of convincing Evangelicals to further dilute their interpretation of the Bible. No… in fact, I see it the other away around. I believe the best way to coax Evangelicals to a more realistic view of Creation is to show how such a view is consistent with interpreting other parts of the Old Testament in the same way.
(1) Apples and oranges. There is copious internal evidence in Gospels that Jesus was using a metaphor. I cannot think of any internal evidence whatsoever in Genesis that would lead me to a metaphorical understanding of the “windows of heaven.” If I am missing something, please provide a citation from the book of Genesis that would point to the windows’ being metaphorical.
(2) In fact, the literal “windows of heaven” have great explanatory power in Genesis 7, because they explain the literal rain:
on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
I have read many publications that insist that great reservoirs of water burst forth in fountains to create the global Noahic flood. 100% literal. These publications also accept the deluge of rain as literal. Do I need to find specific quotes, @johnZ, or do you accept this statement?
Given a literal interpretation of fountains and a literal interpretation of rain and a literal interpretation of a global flood, I am completely at a loss to understand why the windows would not be literal, unless…
unless…
you are importing external concepts to the Biblical account. Such as a modern, scientific understanding of what the heavens are and how rain falls.
(3) How is it possible to assert, based purely on non-Biblical presuppositions, that the windows of heaven are figurative…and, at the same time, to insist that the creation accounts in Genesis 1 - 3 are not figurative?
Thanks in advance, my friend @johnZ. I’ve been thinking a lot about such questions recently.
My apologies, Jammy. When I bing’ed “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy,” I clicked on the first link I saw, and assumed it was the CSBI. I regret the error, and I appreciate your helpful corrections. I note that the two statements do not seem to differ in substance with regard to interpreting Genesis.
I’d be interested in an alternative view of what constitutes an infallible Scripture and a reliable hermeneutic for passages like Genesis 7. Please don’t write a book! Just a few sentences, maybe.
Those books about how to approach infallibility given what we know about language and meaning have already been written and can’t be reduced to a few sentences. I also think that the idea that a single “reliable hermeneutic” can be imposed on every passage of Scripture does violence to the complexity and diversity and richness of God’s Word, and is an example of failed modernist attempts to subjugate it and reduce it to manageable truth nuggets.
See, but we know that afterward. The apostle Peter actually brought a sword along and cut off the ear of one of the men who was apprehending him in the garden before the crucifixion. It was not something embedded in the phrase itself that indicated that Jesus did not mean a literal sword. Further, you would now have to explain whether the word “peace” in the same sentence, was meant figuratively or literally?
As for heavens…: “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse . . . and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” — Malachi 3:10
Certainly windows of heaven were meant figuratively here…
Yes, I accept this. For a couple of reasons. First, there is presently enough water to cover the earth, if it was less variable in height. For a global flood, something dramatic needed to happen, not just a gentle rain, not just normal monsoons. These statements about fountains of the deep and great rain are not detailed explanations, they are only general indications. There is no indication of how much came from the fountains, the velocity of the fountains, how high they were, or how much water came from the rain, or how the rain could last that long, or whether the fountains created the rain… and it doesn’t matter. The point is the whole earth was covered long enough to destroy everything, especially the people, but also the animals that couldn’t live in water.
When we hear of windows, we do not hear of what the windows are made (were they made of clouds, vapor, or ), or how many there were (were there millions, one window for each raindrop…) , or how large they were, etc. So if you want to take it literally, it is your privilege. It makes no real difference, because the effect is the same, that water ended up flooding the earth.
You have to look at the intent of the story, and see whether it is validated by itself. And you have to look at how (HOW) it is told. Genesis does not just illustrate a moral, or a lesson, (even Jonah does that more obviously). Genesis actually provides the basis and justification for our understanding of man’s relationship with God.
I can understand why BioLogos adopts a Trinitarian stance. It is a sensible position for a non-profit with a controversial mission to take.
But I don’t think the pro-Evolution industry is so large that it can ask that ONLY Trinitarian Christians can support BioLogos. So I’m not too worried about my Unitarian Universalist status.
I’m sure you realize that not everyone is familiar with the formal religious calendar. Wiki lists the religious calendar for the Western tradition and the Eastern (Orthodox) tradition:
Western
Advent
Christmastide
Epiphanytide
Ordinary Time
Septuagesima/Pre-Lent/Shrovetide
Lent
Holy Week
Paschal Triduum Eastertide
Pentecost
Ordinary Time/Kingdomtide
Eastern
Nativity Fast
Christmastide
Ordinary Time
Septuagesima/Pre-Great Lent
Great Lent Eastertide
Apostles’ Fast
Ordinary Time
While I was baptized a Roman Catholic, I was not raised in its traditions… and do not have a strong emotional attachment to most of the formal religious seaons
"Eastertide is the period of fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday.[2] It is celebrated as a single joyful feast, indeed as the “great Lord’s Day”.[3]
Each Sunday of the season is treated as a Sunday of Easter, and, after the Sunday of the Resurrection, they are named Second Sunday of Easter, Third Sunday of Easter, etc. up to the Seventh Sunday of Easter, while the whole fifty-day period concludes with Pentecost Sunday.[4]"
Easter Sunday and Pentecost correspond to pre-existing Jewish feasts: The first day of Pesach (פסח) and the holiday of Shavu’ot (שבועות). In the Jewish tradition, the 49 days between these holidays are known as Counting of the Omer (ספירת העומר).[5]"
“The first eight days constitute the Octave of Easter and are celebrated as solemnities of the Lord.[6]
Since 2000 the Second Sunday of Easter is also called Divine Mercy Sunday. The name “Low Sunday” for this Sunday, once common in English, is now rarely used.”
That’s a long way of saying I don’t have much of an opinion at all about Eastertide… along with millions of others not raised with these traditions.
The question is not what “we” know. The question is what the original audience/readers perceived. Would you agree?
The original audience/readers of the gospel knew that the sword was metaphorical because they had access to the entire gospel as soon as the ink hit the papyrus.
The situation in Genesis 7 is 100% completely the opposite. The account says Noah experienced a rainstorm magnitudes beyond anything normal. Together with the fountains, it was enough to cause a global flood so deep that
all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. - Genesis 7:19 (ESV)
A literal sword in Jesus’ utterance has no explanatory power, as Peter discovered and the readers recognized instantly. Not so with the readers of “the windows of heaven” in Genesis 7, which has strong explanatory power when taken literally. Apples and oranges.
If we suppose the highest mountains were 66% lower than today’s–a mere 10,000 feet high (3km)–that would require a rise in sea level of, get this:
250 feet per day
If just 5% of the water came from rain and the other 95% from fountains, that would imply rainfall of 12 feet per day, or 6 inches per hour, 24/7, for almost 6 weeks straight. On every square inch of the earth’s surface.
Such a rainfall cannot be explained by the laws of geophysics, as you note. It can, however, be explained by the descent of a vast sea of water, the one that was above the heaven in Genesis 1:6, down to the earth. To get through the dome of heaven, though, the water needs a passageway. Hence the “windows of heaven.”
What is this concept so hard for you to understand? Your mind so easily accepts the creation of the universe and everything in it, substantially in today’s form, in 144 hours. You readily latch onto a worldwide flood that would require fluid dynamics vastly beyond the laws of geophysics. You affirm (assuming you agree with the RATE report) that radioactivity increased by 9 orders of magnitude during the flood year–never mind that carbon and oxygen atoms would basically dissolve if the atomic weak force were at the required constant, and that every living thing on the ark would become a puddle of molten, white-hot radioactivity due to potassium decay.
Given that you have already swallowed these camels, why are you straining at the gnat of heavenly windows?
The point is that they are distinct from the water above the raqi’a/dome of heaven, and they were able to hold that water above the raqi’a until they get opened.
A wonderful promise that I always love to hear! To the extent that it’s a metaphor, though, it does nothing to disprove literal windows of heaven.
A metaphor cannot work without a true-to-life referent. As you and I read this passage today, having been exposed to the past 500 years of scientific advance, we think of the windows in the walls of our houses and offices. In the ancient Near East, though, the readers of Malachi’s prophecy knew nothing of twenty-first century science and technology. They were quite familiar with ANE cosmology, though. It is an anachronism of the highest order to simply read our 21st-century assumptions into the text of Malachi.
I would also like to ask once again that you address this extremely important question which, for some reason, you chose not to answer:
How is it possible to assert, against textual evidence in Genesis, that the windows of heaven are figurative and, at the same time, to insist that the creation accounts in Genesis 1 - 3 must be treated in a literal-historical manner?
I agree wholeheartedly with this critical point.
Peace,
Chris Falter
EDITS: Grammar; fixed broken quote; added a bit at the end.
@Henry
If you want people to comment on other threads, you should @ from the relevant discussion topic or send them a message. Otherwise it is confusing and off-topic.
Sincere Trinitarians can create good organizations with NARROW focus, or with BROAD focus. Evangelicals would be the first ones to throw out questions about an organization that lacked an adequate belief statement.
But by establishing a traditionally sound stance on Trinitarianism, there is one less thing for Evangelicals to complain about. And I respect that. And if you had respect for BioLogos, you wouldn’t attempt to besmirch the organization along these lines …
I’m just a little shocked that you have attempted to give BioLogos A BLACK EYE for making Trinitarianism part of their statement of belief … instead of agreeing that this is the highroad for any Evangelically-oriented group.
You, dear sir, seem quite zealous in depicting BioLogos and/or its supporters as negatively as possible.
Why don’t you pray about that…
I don’t think that was the intent at all. Eddie was just saying it wasn’t merely a strategic thing, it was representative of the beliefs of the founders.
Of course it is representative of the belief of the founders.
But if the founders were Evolutionists, Trinitarians AND Baptists … would the Statement of Belief HAVE to be baptist as well? No, of course not. Which was the point I was trying to make. It makes sense to include Trinitarianism in the statement of belief so that the Evangelicals would have one less thing to worry about… or to criticize.
It is Eddie’s particular GENIUS to take something ordinary and make it extraordinarily suspicious or negative…
So there was nothing ODD about this discussion of mine … and it is pretty clear Eddie was trying to depict me as overly “cunning” or “manipulative” in my postings…
Wonderful. Now that everyone understands one another and no one accusing anyone of anything nefarious, we can all get back to stirring topic of “the windows of heaven -figurative or literal?”
Sure, but to suggest that they actually saw a dome, or saw “windows”? Surely they knew they were guessing at something, no matter what words were used. They certainly also knew what figurative language was, even then, so it is no excuse to say that they must of necessity interpreted windows literally. Yet heavens would be seen and understood generally… they knew what water was… and they knew what a flood was. Besides, it is reasonable to suppose that this story did not originate with Moses, but was passed on from Noah himself. So what is significant, and what is not? “windows”… not significant. Global flood, very significant. The ark… very significant. “Windows” is at the same level as “foundations of the earth stood firm”. If there was no rain, then windows means nothing at all, nothing metaphorical, and nothing literal.
One metaphor never proves another, I agree. That’s part of the point isn’t it. That if windows is a metaphor, there is not evidence that the entire story it is embedded in is a metaphor. I am glad we are agreed on that. That’s really the main point. So to me it is pointless to make this constant question… why do I accept one metaphor and not another, as if they compare. They simply do not compare. I have already shown that there is much greater significance thinking the story is metaphorical than some windows being figurative.
If you say that God metaphorically created creation good, and had metaphorical conversations with a man who did not exist, and that man was not really responsible for his sin, yeah, that’s a significant change of our theology. As for the flood being global, there is no evidence that a local flood was even possible, and no justification for an ark being built, nor a need for so many animals to be on the ark if it was local.
A metaphor can illustrate something, or substitute for something, but it cannot itself provide the basis for something. EG. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches. This is an illustration, a metaphor, but it is an illustration of our connection to Jesus, which exists prior to the illustration. As a metaphor, it cannot provide a basis for our relationship, which is based not on the continuation of xylem and phloem, or the connection of branches and roots of some vine, but on the shed blood of Christ and on Christ as Spirit living in our hearts.
In the same way, a metaphorical story cannot provide the basis, but only illustrate something that already exists. The Genesis story does not do that very well as merely an illustration. We can understand a vine with branches. But we cannot understand a global flood, and total destruction of man, and an ark, unless it actually happened. We cannot understand man created from dust, separate from the animals, unless it actually happened. We cannot understand plants being created before the great lights in the sky, unless it actually happened. We cannot understand God’s command not to eat of a tree. We cannot understand them giving in to being tempted as a reason for the curse on mankind. As a metaphor, most of the story becomes confusing and meaningless, and has little value. But as a real event, it has significance.
David Clines of University of Sheffield writes (“One or Two things You may not know about the Universe”):
He describe’s the book of Job with much of a chapter devoted to the forces of nature … challenging the reader to explain natural events … events that God controls:
Job 38:22
Hast thou entered into the treasures [aka STOREHOUSES] of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures [STOREHOUSES] of the hail,
Job 38:23
Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?
Clines writes:
"It is well known that in Hebrew cosmology there are storehouses in the heavens, but how many are they? There is a variety …
1] there is a storehouse of rain (Deut. 28:12); of wind (Job 37:9; Jer. 10:13…);
2] of clouds (Sir. 43:14); perhaps of the heavenly sea (Psa. 33:7; of darkness, cf. 1QS 10:2);
3] of winds, snow, mist, thunder (1 Enoch 41:4; 60:11-21);
4] of winds, meteors and lightning (1QH 1:12; 11QBer 2:7);
5] and apparently of manna also (Psa. 78:23-24).
In the present text, most readers recognize storehouses of snow and hail, but there is a third as well: heat…"
[END OF EXCERPT]
Clines makes a simple point - - what may have been LITERAL cosmology to the Hebrew scribes we now know is either INCORRECT, or FIGURATIVE… There are no STOREHOUSES (aka “Treasures”) … except in the mind of a poet…
