Knowledge will increase (Daniel 12:4)?

Faith & Science Conversation
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I have been thinking about Daniel 12:4:
”But you, Daniel, roll up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many will go here and there to increase knowledge.” (NIV)
”But as for you, Daniel,keep these words secret and seal up the book until the end of time; many will roam about, and knowledge will increase” (NASB)

What this verse seems to hint is that understanding about the matters written in the book of Daniel, and probably in similar kind of texts elsewhere in the scriptures, will increase with time as the activities of humans accumulate knowledge. It also hints that God’s plans and secrets are revealed step by step, not everything at once.

That sounds true if we think of how the understanding about God and His plans have developed during history, first from the earliest texts in Genesis to the time of Jesus, then from the death of Jesus onwards. For example, there are prophetic texts about the future Messiah in the Hebrew Bible but they are not easy to interpret without knowledge about what happened later in the history.
The messages in the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible (OT), seem to be told in a way that made it possible for the listeners to accept the (spiritual) key messages. This accommodation to the culture meant that the message was told within the worldview of the listeners, rather than revealing new information about the ‘scientific facts’ of the universe. When we read the ancient scriptures, we need to take into account the culture of the original listeners to separate the lasting core message from the cultural accommodation.

That is all basic stuff, accepted by most. The picture becomes a bit more complicated when we remember that also the reader interprets the text through the contemporary culture. We are all children of our time and culture and our interpretation is limited by our knowledge and assumptions. For this reason, a person who lived 2000 years ago would have interpreted the scriptures in a partly differing way than we do and a person living 2000 years in the future might interpret the same text in a way that differs from our current interpretation.

This basic principle may become controversial when we talk about what was written and decided by early generations of Christians. If we read the interpretations of Christians that lived 1200+ years ago (‘Fathers’ and the other early Christians), can we trust that their interpretations were fully correct? They were children of their time and their texts include points that show this limitation. For example, Clement writes in his first letter about the phoenix bird as an example of resurrection in Creation - he apparently believed that phoenix birds and the stories about their life were real.
There seems to be a need to sift the early Christian interpretations as we sift the ancient texts to separate the lasting messages from the culturally coloured beliefs.

As the knowledge accumulates, it may be that the later interpretations of the biblical scriptures are more correct than the early interpretations. The big question is which early interpretations should be understood as normative and which can be replaced based on better knowledge?
That is a question that may provoke disagreements.

This is an interesting and possibly influential topic, so I decided to ask your opinions about it to get some feedback.
What do you think about this question (the effect of the accumulating knowledge to the interpretation of the scriptures and earlier teachings)?
Should we stick to what the early generations of Christians wrote or can we reinterpret what the scriptures teach if we get better knowledge, for example about the language and cultural context of the biblical scriptures?

Knowledge obtained through scientific research is an important part of this question. How much can we modify our interpretations based on increasing scientific knowledge, for example about the evolutionary history of humans?

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I don’t think we can. While some talk about progressive revelation I tend to think more in terms of a progressive appreciation of God. We have a deeper appreciation of God then those early church fathers. It doesn’t make what they wrote incorrect, just incomplete.

It’s not a case of “can we reinterpret” but “we must reinterpret” when we have better knowledge of the text, culture, and yes even science. And in answer to your last question, I don’t think there can be any limit on how much we can modify.

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This is not true. If it were ever proven that the Resurrection did not happen, for example, Christianity would collapse for obvious reasons. And even a hypothetical discovery that the soul does not exist would directly contradict one of Jesus’ teachings. So yes, there are limits to how much we can revise. If science and irrefutable evidence ever forced us to cross those limits, it would simply mean that our faith is false. But that has not happened

The existence of 47,000 different Christian denominations in contradiction among themselves on crucial theological and ecclesiological doctrines proves that no, we don’t have a deeper appreciation of God, God is the God of truth, not of confusion and never ending contradiction. The existence of so many different Christian denominations is not a sign that our appreciation has grown, it’s a sign of confusion and division.

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I think there is an important truth in what you are saying, but it needs to be stated carefully.

Daniel 12:4 does suggest that some things are not understood all at once, and that fuller understanding may come later, but I would be cautious about turning that verse into a general rule that doctrine simply changes whenever human knowledge increases. The stronger point is this: divine revelation is complete, while human understanding of it grows over time.

That distinction matters a great deal, because is a real difference between the substance of the faith and our interpretation, formulation, explanation, or defense of it: understanding can deepen, language can become more precise, and earlier interpretations can be corrected where they were too tied to the assumptions of their age, but that isn’t the same thing as saying that the core truths of the faith are endlessly revisable.

So I would not say, “later automatically means better.” I would say something more nuanced: later generations may understand some things better, especially when they have better tools for language, history, archaeology, and literary analysis, but any genuine development has to be continuous with the original apostolic faith rather than a contradiction of it.

That is also how I would approach the early Christian writers: they are extremely important witnesses, especially because they stand so close to the apostolic age and preserve the mind of the early Church, but it doesn’t follow that every opinion held by every ancient Christian author is binding or permanently correct.

Your example of Clement and the phoenix is actually a very good one: If an early Christian author could use the phoenix as an illustration of resurrection, that shows exactly why one must distinguish between a theological truth being expressed and the cultural vehicle used to express it. The truth being taught may be sound even if the illustrative framework is not. So yes, there is a real need to sift enduring theological content from temporary cultural assumptions.

The same principle applies to biblical interpretation itself. Scripture was given in history, through human language, to real communities with real cultural assumptions. That means the reader must pay attention to genre, context, idiom, symbolism, and the intention of the sacred author. A text can be fully true in what it teaches without being intended as a modern scientific description. In fact, many interpretive conflicts arise precisely when ancient theological texts are forced into modern scientific categories they were never meant to occupy.

And in my view this is where science enters the discussion.

In my view, science has not contradicted any genuine truth of Christian faith properly understood. What it has contradicted, at times, are certain interpretations made by Christians, especially interpretations that confused the theological meaning of a text with an ancient cosmology or a pre-scientific model of the world.

That is a very important distinction.

So when modern science shows that the universe is ancient, or that life developed over long periods of time, that does not refute creation. It only refutes the assumption that “creation” must mean “an instantaneous production of everything in its final form a few thousand years ago.” But that assumption is not itself the essence of the Christian doctrine of creation. The doctrine of creation is fundamentally the claim that all things depend on God for their existence, order, and intelligibility. That claim is not touched by whether the universe developed in six twenty-four-hour periods, over billions of years, or by a combination of processes we are still learning to understand.

The same applies to evolution. Evolution, by itself, doesn’t disprove God, creation, providence, or human dignity, It describes a biological process. The real theological questions begin when one tries to turn that biological process into a total worldview and say that matter, chance, and necessity are all that exist and that a couple that was the genealogical ancestor of all humanity, a couple specially elevated by God, cannot exist. That move is philosophical, not scientific.

So yes, I think it is possible (and often necessary) to revise older interpretations in light of better knowledge of language, history, and science. But not everything is equally revisable.

A sensible rule would be something like this:

  1. If a belief belongs to the central content of the faith, it cannot simply be discarded because modern culture dislikes it.
  2. If a belief is instead an ancient scientific assumption, a local custom, a passing explanatory model, or a commentator’s attempt to make sense of the text using the best tools available at the time, then it may well be corrected or abandoned.

That is why one should not flatten everything into the same category. “What early Christians thought” is too broad a phrase. Some things they handed down as part of the faith itself, some things they argued about, some things they simply assumed because everybody in their world assumed them. Those are not the same.

So to your main question ( should we stick to what the early generations of Christians wrote, or can we reinterpret Scripture with better knowledge? ( my answer would be: we should take the early generations very seriously, but not treat every one of their judgments as untouchable. Better knowledge can and should refine interpretation. What it should not do is sever interpretation from the core faith those early generations received and transmitted.

Put differently: there is a difference between development and replacement.

Development means seeing more clearly what was always there.

Replacement means importing a new worldview and reading the old faith through it until the substance changes.

The first is legitimate and necessary. The second is neither legitimate nor necessary. And this (development, not contradiction) is a framework clearly followed by most Christians worldwide, since most Christians belong to churches with apostolic succession: taken together, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church account for a clear majority of the world’s Christians.

So I would summarize my position this way: Christian faith does not fear truth from any quarter. Scientific discovery can correct bad readings, shallow harmonizations, and culturally conditioned assumptions. It can force believers to read Scripture more carefully and more intelligently, but it doesn’t overthrow the actual truths of faith. At most, it exposes where believers may have confused those truths with older, non-essential frameworks.

In that sense, increasing knowledge is not a threat to faith. It is a test of whether we know how to distinguish what is permanent from what is provisional.

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You raise some excellent questions.

I think the Church can, and must, reinterpret teachings of the early Christians. There are, no doubt, core doctrines, like the ones captured by the Nicene Creed for example, that have stood the test of time. But, the Church throughout its history has reinterpreted many teachings of the early Christians. A good example is some of the early teachings on the natural history of humans – we have had to separate the theological truths from many of the teachings about the actual physical processes involved in creation. There are many other teachings that have been reinterpreted.

I am not as bothered by denominational differences as some. I think God recognizes, even celebrates, the diversity of people. It would be nice if there was more effort put into peacebuilding among Christians, rather than dividing.

Having said this, I think reinterpreting teachings must be done very carefully. My denomination’s confession of faith highlights the following points about interpretation of scripture:

  • the authority of Scripture for ethics, for the relation of the church to society, and for church polity.
  • the interpretation of Scripture in harmony with Jesus Christ, in the sense that his life, teachings, death, and resurrection are essential to understanding the Bible as a whole.
  • the congregation of believers as the place where individual understandings and interpretations of Scripture are to be tested.