i don’t see how you get from the first part of this sentence to the last. If you accept evolution as used by God in the creation of humans than He is the Intelligent Designer. The theory of ID wouldn’t enter into it so the “do not” doesn’t make sense. You can speculate on how homo sapiens became the modern human made in the image of God, but I don’t know how you are going to discover exactly how or when this took place.
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YES.
You are assuming that God MUST have inspired the writers of the Bible to speak to the condition of humans all over the world rather than reasonably restricting the scope of the story to what they were in positions to have direct knowledge of. The Bible is the story of a single lineage and culture, and its relationship with God. To the extent that Jesus’ example and message is more broadly applicable, great! But the Jews never went around telling everybody they could reach that they were all in need of redemption because Adam and Eve sinned.
I think that one thing going on here is that you are very uncomfortable with the idea that humanity was a gradual process rather than a case of somebody (or somebodies) in the distant past waking up one day human. Have you seen this video?
What did you think of it? The comment section when I saw it (not that I recommend looking at YouTube comment sections) was full of shock and dismay at the concept of the video, which I didn’t think was at all shocking or dismaying. I’m still trying to figure out why.
I mentioned this earlier, but is the problem that you feel you have to figure out when humans got immortal souls? Do you also need to know which direction those souls headed? Isn’t that God’s exclusive jurisdiction?
One final note: if Genesis says God created humankind in Gen 1:26-27 (as opposed to “forming” Adam in Gen 2) and doesn’t call them animals in that verse, why on earth would it be necessary for you to come along and invent the label “homo sapiens animals”?
Thank you for your thoughtful and adaptable responses!
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I agree. The process will always be a mystery. And we don’t really need to know, anyway.
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As another has already commented, since I think most BioLogos supporters, like me, support the idea that God did design humans (by means of God-ordained evolution), the only thing we tend to reject from the I.D. camp are two points:
a) That you can tell which part of evolution is God’s Design because it is “so awesome”. It seems easy for YEC ID folks to make this determination. Most of the rest of us don’t see any way for science to determine this.
and
b) There is no universal position amongst I.D. supporters whether the Earth is old enough to allow common descent to affect Earth’s life forms meaningfully or not. There’s always a few ID folks who do accept the extreme antiquity of Earth - - but those Old Earthers don’t seem to visit these BioLogos pages very often.
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Speaking of animals, ran across this comic yesterday which related, though it adds little or nothing to the discussion:
http://www.gocomics.com/saturday-morning-breakfast-cereal
Great Lynn!
I am glad we have found common ground and formulate my theory about the Flood more accurately, in order to give adaptable responses to your questions:
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In the region of the five antediluvians Sumerian cities lived about 100’000 people, among them Noah and his family. All these humans were aware of God’s law, morally responsible and capable of sinning; they were all (Noah included) in need of Redemption. Except Noah and his family all were guilty of sin and perished in the Flood. Noah took in his wood vessel some of the domestic animals living in the region: the rest drowned.
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Outside Sumer, and spread all over the planet, lived about 7,000,000 human beings and practically all animal species we know today. All these living beings (humans and non-humans) had no sense of law and moral responsibility, and therefore could not be guilty of sin or be in need Redemption: They were neither “ungodly” nor “godly”. Since all of them remained untouched by the Flood, the region where they lived (almost the whole planet) was equivalent to Noah’s container from the perspective of the flooding event. It is therefore fitting to say that the “Ark” referred to in Genesis had a “very large lower deck”, as large as practically the whole earth. (It seems to me that Jim Stump suggests something similar although invoking a “miracle” on the part of God).
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At the End of the Flood God endowed the 7,000,000 Homo sapiens with sense of law and moral responsibility, and consequently capability to sin, just as He had done with the Homo sapiens creatures from which He created “Adam and Eve”. However, while “Adam and Eve” before the Fall were not in need of Redemption, the new human persons did need Redemption (see later) from the very beginning of their existence the same way as Noah, his family and all the human persons God creates presently every day.
On the one hand this explains why vestiges revealing sense of law appear only at times after the supposed Flood event. On the other hand it is plausible to assume law in Sumerian cities before the Flood because corresponding tablets have been found displaying Cuneiform writings, the script used thereafter to write contracts like those found in tablets at Shuruppak and law codes like those of Ur-Nammu and Hammurabi.
Undoubtedly, in the search for truth observation is the highest authority (even higher than the Bible!). So my theory should be revised if new evidence would require it. But for the time being it seems to fit rather well to the data we have, within the rather large margins of error of today’s methods for estimating how old vestiges are.
I am assuming that:
“[T]he Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God. By the Holy Spirit it is the “living and active” means through which God speaks to the church today, bearing witness to God’s Son, Jesus, as the divine Logos, or Word of God.” [Biologos, What we Believe, 1.]
And:
[T]he historical incarnation of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man… the historical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which we are saved and reconciled to God. [Biologos, What we Believe, 4.]
In other words, the writers of the Bible were inspired by the Word of God to write something useful for the Salvation of humans all over the world, and therefore adaptable to the conditions of all peoples of all times, certainly by means of what they were in positions to have direct knowledge of. What is more, the New Testament must be interpreted in the light of the Council of Jerusalem (49 AD), where “the Holy Spirit and leaders of the Church” proclaimed that Salvation is not only for the Jews but for all people (Acts 15:1-35).
With this perspective the natural interpretation of 2 Peter 2:5 is that it describes:
By the way, even Flavius Josephus himself, seems to endorse the interpretation that the Flood affected the whole humanity and not only “a single lineage and culture”:
“Now God loved this man for his righteousness: yet he not only condemned those other men for their wickedness, but determined to destroy the whole race of mankind, and to make another race that should be pure from wickedness; and cutting short their lives, and making their years not so many as they formerly lived, but one hundred and twenty only, he turned the dry land into sea; and thus were all these men destroyed: but Noah alone was saved;”. [The Antiquities of the Jews, Chapter 3, 2.]
In any case today, on the basis of the available data, any reasonable account about the Flood has to assume that:
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About 100,000 humans living around Noah became destroyed by the Flood because of their sins,
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and 7,000,000 humans living far away spread all over the world remained untouched.
In view of this scenario the interesting question is:
Were the 7,000,000 living far away capable to sin YES or NO?
If YES then we have a problem because according to BioLogos it holds that they all had sinned against God [What we believe, 3.], and the explanation of the Flood as expression of God’s Justice becomes derisory.
If NO then we confirm the explanation I have proposed above. Accordingly, at the end of the Flood God endowed the 7,000,000 Homo sapiens with sense of law and moral responsibility the same way as He did when He created “Adam and Eve”.
And now we have to decide which stage these new 7,000,000 morally responsible human beings were in: The stage of
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“Adam and Eve” before the Fall, i.e.: they were not in need of Redemption;
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or “Adam and Eve” and their descendants after the Fall, including Noah and his family, i.e.: they were in need of Redemption.
In other words we have to answer the question:
Would it have been sound on the part of God to keep together in this world people in need of Redemption together with people who don’t need Redemption?
The answer to this question is crucial to decide whether the stage of “need of Redemption” (which all people are supposed to share) is or not linked to the Fall, that is the first sin of human history (which is not necessarily the same as the sin of the first human person).
I would be thankful for your opinion about this.
Meanwhile I prepare responses to your questions about the interesting video “There was no first human” and “immortal souls”.
I am glad we seem to be getting somewhere as well! My personal beliefs don’t really fall under the Biologos statement of belief, but I will try from here on out to keep my arguments restricted to ones that do.
Does this mean we today are pure from wickedness? I think maybe the wickedness of the people destroyed by the flood was more extreme than the general sinfulness of humanity.
I went back to look at Genesis 6, at how the Bible describes those God decided to destroy, and I think perhaps I found where you and I differ. Let me quote a section:
“The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”
I think this may be where you are drawing your people/animal distinction from. But try reading it again, and this time, every time you see the word ‘earth,’ remember that the modern sense of ‘planet’ was certainly not meant by the writers. Swap in ‘the land’ as in a local area or ‘country.’
I think this results in a very different meaning, don’t you?
I am also trying to figure out, without knowing Hebrew, if the references to ‘the human race’/‘mankind’ are possibly referring only to Adam’s descendants or not, but I am not having much luck so far. At any rate that would not be very workable either in terms of sin, because we know some of Cain’s descendants survived the flood.
In fact, I think you are wrong to make ‘sin’ the defining boundary or quality at all, because that would mean saying Noah was sinless, which it’s my understanding applies only to Jesus. The flood destroyed people whose only inclinations were wicked continually, people who Peter referred to as ‘ungodly,’ it does not say it destroyed them because they sinned or were sinners. Or do we say today that godly people must be sinless, or that all sinners are ungodly? Of course not! The words have two different meanings.
I look forward to seeing your future responses as well!
In another thread, I posted this to @Jonathan_Burke:
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So… @Jonathan_Burke, what does the meta-message of a local flood even mean?
God found the “local population” so contemptible, he rescued Noah from its midst, like he rescued Lot from the midst of Sodom & Gom. . . .
But the rest of the world’s people he left unmolested?
Doesn’t this put Noah and his family “on par” with the surviving Nephilium? I’m starting to like this “local flood” interpretation … it allows for all sorts of new ideas!
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Lynn, how do you resolve this issue? Noah’s relations are just nasty … they have to be wiped out. But everyone else, around the world, are just fine… “Go home… there’s nothing to see here!”
If you have discussed this already, my apologies for having missed it.
In a recent Biblogos blog we have this definition of concordism: " A system of exegesis aimed at establishing a concordance between biblical texts and scientific data" - See more at: The Various Meanings of Concordism - BioLogos.
When scientific facts are not in agreement with stories in the Bible, there are two ways to seek concord. One is to make up your own science. This is the YEC method. According to the above definition this may not be considered concordism because it is not “a system of exegesis”. Never the less it seeks for concord.
People who accept the findings of modern science use another method if they must achieve concord. This second method fits the above definition of concordism in that it uses exegesis to get the Bible to agree with science.
In the flood story the first method would conclude there was a flood that covered the whole Earth. The second method would say it was only a local flood. The problem with the second method is having to explain away some of the details of the story.
Antoine points out one of these problem details. All humans except Noah and family perished in the flood. To solve this problem he resorts to method one and redefines the word human. Isn’t it better to conclude that the Bible and science are not in concord about the flood story than to insist that they be in agreement if it means coming up with such strained explanations?
If it was a local flood why did Noah have to take all the animals? The local area could be repopulated with animals from over the hill. Also what’s the point of the rainbow story? I’ll never send a flood to wipe out a local area again.
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I think your points are perfectly valid! Though I do think those who argue for a local flood have a lot more problems than the “all the animals” issue. The animals could be a much more reasonable quantity … to provide food and new breeding stock for Noah when he hits dry land. All of a sudden, the dimensions of the ark seem much less miraculous, if it is just carrying a load of key animals… not every terrestrial creature of the whole Earth.
To assert that the Divine Inspiration was that it was a Local Flood seems rather contrary to the whole point of the story:
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local flood… takes a year to land?
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local flood… there are humans on the other side of the mountain that are much nicer than Noah’s relatives…
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local flood… but it takes forever for the birds to finally find land?..
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local flood… your rainbow comment… quite good. I’ll remember it for use later.
It’s this dual-story mess of Local vs. Global that convinces me that the story may have started out “local” … and then got dressed up to be global (rather than the reverse process).
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I guess I don’t see the issue? The God of the Old Testament frequently decides one group or another must have disaster inflicted upon them.
As for the Nephilim, there seem to be two interpretations: one, children of angels and humans, or two, children of the holy lineage of Adam (as in, Jesus traces his lineage back to Adam son of God) and the rest of the people on the earth. I lean towards the second, implying merely that one tribe was rather taller than another, though I haven’t researched it enough for any firm conclusion.
Of course, there was also the study talked about here that indicates mathematically that anybody alive that long ago is either the ancestor of all of us or none of us, which means it’s not a particularly impactive question for us to wonder about in terms of who’s descended from whom.
Or? Or, could there be a pure pocket of Nephilum somewhere in the world… a race of humanity that has never been impeached by God in the Flood?
Just sayin’…
That would require something like 200 generations of people in a row only having sex with people their parents allowed them to. Continuous generations, and a community large enough to avoid getting horribly inbred makes it even more unlikely. Even one rebel is all it takes to mix up bloodlines!
Can I interest you in some swampland in Florida?
But I don’t really understand what you mean by ‘impeached,’ either. Are you describing Noah’s family as impeached by God? That’s a new one on me.
Plus, Nephilim would hardly be the only humans outside of the flood zone.
Thanks tomr for addressing the basic question of “defining human”.
I neither “resort to method one” nor “redefine the word human”.
I try to define the word human well.
Actually many of the so called “conflicts” between Bible and Science originate from ill-defined words.
You seem to claim you can sharply define through scientific facts the concept ‘human’.
So I challenge you to answer the following question:
Humans now exist.
However humans didn’t always exist.
Consequently there must have been a first human.
Can you tell us when and how did this “first human” come into existence?
Some points to consider:
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The Bible appears to only describe the Nephilum as survivors outside the ark.
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Do you know the Druze (Druse)? Generation after generation of private communion amongst themselves.
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If one knows the special nature of your own group, it is not too surprising that extra diligence be applied.
No, actually there never was a “first human.” We started as a population of humans. Am I right, @DennisVenema?
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Consider the following reworked sentence:
“People now speak modern English. However, people didn’t always speak modern English. Consequently there must have been the first speaker of modern English.”
and it should become clear that this was achieved as a population, incrementally.
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Thanks, Dennis!
When I say the flood was anthropolgoically local I mean it only destroyed the people in one area, not all the people on the entire planet (other than those in the Ark).
Antiquities I:96-98.
(96) Noah, fearing that God would flood the earth every year, because he had sentenced mankind to destruction, offered burnt offerings and asked God to maintain the original order in the future and inflict such calamity no more, by which the whole race of living beings would run the risk of being destroyed; but [he asked God], having avenged the wicked, to spare those who survived because of their goodness and those who had been judged fit to escape the danger. (97) For [he said] they would be more unfortunate than those and condemned to worse evil, if they might not be absolutely safe from it but might be kept for another flood, when they, having learned1 of the terrible experience of the first destruction, would also suffer a second. (98) He beseeched him to accept his offer graciously and to harbour such wrath against the earth no more, in order that they, concentrating on farming it [i.e. the earth] and building cities, might have a happy life, and that they should lack none of the good things they enjoyed before the deluge; so that they would live unto a good old age and a length of life similar to that enjoyed by men previously.
Translation in Jonquière, Prayer in Josephus (2007). Jonquière’s commentary follows.
“However, in the light of Noah’s remark in the prayer, I think Josephus takes it that there were more survivors of the Flood, namely, honest people besides Noah, who were also judged fit to survive.” (1)
“Similarly, Josephus tells us that Noah asks God in his prayer that the people who were rescued may found cities and build up new lives” (2)
(1) Tessel Marina Jonquière, Prayer in Josephus (BRILL, 2007), 59.
(2) Tessel Marina Jonquière, Prayer in Josephus (BRILL, 2007), 60.