"Narrative Theology" approach to Scripture

@tokyoguy111

Is reality that which one sees or that which is true?

If Jesus arose from the dead on the third day, just as Jonah reportedly spent three days in the belly of the big fish, no problem.

However this statement predicts that Jesus would spend three days and three nights in the grave. If Jesus was buried just before Friday night, then He must have been in the grave all of Saturday, Sunday, and risen Monday morning.

The Bible says Jesus arose on the first day, our Sunday. Which truth is correct?

But Jesus speaks as if it actually happened! That’s the point. What authority do you have to go and proclaim it to be myth? I don’t understand the Biologos approach to Scripture! Whenever a miracle is called for in the text, the passage suddenly becomes a myth. It’s like you have an allergy to the miraculous except when it comes to the resurrection where you suddenly go anti-science.

Roger, just what miracles do you believe in that are recorded in the Bible?

What are your standards for deciding whether to believe something is miraculous or whether it is myth?

Have you never heard an answer for this before? Here is an answer for that objection: https://www.jashow.org/articles/questions-and-answers/questions-about-the-bible/questions-about-bible-passages/the-sign-of-jonah/

For what it’s worth @tokyoguy111 I’m (mostly) with you on this one. “It’s historical when it’s sounds historical to me” is a bad hermeneutic from an Evangelical perspective. Our friends here are from traditions that are allowed to play faster and looser with the text than the rules Evangelicals typically agree to play by.

@tokyoguy111

Thank you for your response. The question is not miraculous or a myth, is it Logos or Mythos? A Mythos is a story which is not proven to be true, but is believed to be true because of tradition and authority. Logos is a story or fact which has been proven to be rationally true.

Let me give you an example. If you believe that God created the universe in 6 24 hour days because that is what it says in Genesis, you believe in a myth, because you are accepting that concept strictly on the basis of tradition. On the other hand if you believe that God created the universe in time because that what it says in Genesis and confirmed by other parts of the Bible and scientific investigation, you believe in the Logos as found in John 1.

Above you corrected the clear meaning of the gospel by citing research and of course we know that Jesus did not spend three whole days in the grave. A mythos is not subject to that kind of research and correction. The answer to the problem that I presented was “a figure of speech”.

In another blog on this website someone defends “yom” as used in Gen. 1 as a 24 hour day and presents his or her case. The response presented gives the case that “yom” is a figure of speech that does not necessarily mean a 24 hour day and this needs to be determined by the physical evidence as to how God created the universe. I believe that the Bible is built on Logos which can and needs to be tested, not Mythos which is not subject to rational test.

I would say that the story of Jonah is a parable, rather than history, because there is no evidence as to when it took place. We can see it took place in Nineveh, which was an important city in its time. however there is no RECORD of this event except this book, even in the OT. Imagine a prophet travels to the Moscow in the middle of the Cold War and convinces the capital of the Soviet Union and Stalin to repent, but there is no record in history of this event.

This is the “miracle” of Jonah, not the great fish (never mind the “whale.”) Nineveh repented! But the important thing is the message of Jonah, which is God cared enough about the people of Nineveh, the heart of an Evil Empire, hated by all, in order to bring them to repentance. The reason that Jonah refused to go was because he like everyone else hated Nineveh and did not want them to repent and be saved from destruction.

Jonah was angry that God was able to spare the city. Then God sent a vine to give Jonah shelter from the hot sun, which he appreciated. Then God sent a “worm” which caused the vine to quickly wither and die, and Jonah was furious. God ends the book by pointing out that just as Jonah was concerned about the welfare of a simple vine, God was concerned about a great city of 120,00 people and their cattle…

God is The GOD Who RELATES, not only to us, but all human beings and non-humans. That is the truth of Jonah and which God demonstrates every day, particularly if one has the eyes to see. it.

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“It’s historical when it’s sounds historical to me” is a bad hermeneutic from an Evangelical perspective. Our friends here are from traditions that are allowed to play faster and looser with the text than the rules Evangelicals typically agree to play by.

@Christy

That is not the issue. It is historical narrative if it fits into a historical framework.

The book of Job is not even in the historical section of the OT. It is part of the Writings section with the Psalms. It takes place in an unknown land and never mentions Jewish covenantal law and has the two tier view of reality with YHWH part of the narrative.

Jonah is a one of a kind story set in a foreign land and carries strong message that God cares for non-Jews as well as Jews. Job and Jonah are powerful examples of theology presented as a narrative, thus forming a strong basis for God using narrative as theology.

On the other hand Esther is a short historical novel. It does not refer to God even once in the whole book, but apparently it caught the mind of the people so it became scripture. God does have a sense of humor and the ability to use different sources to make up God’s word like The Song of Songs.

You never responded to my assertion that metaphor and narrative theology works, because reality and language are both relational. Western thought considers language as abstract, which is false.

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That’s nice to know!

OK, so a Mythos is a story not proven to be true. It might be true, but it hasn’t been proven to be true. I guess that is also possible, right?

But Roger, honestly, how can you really prove any of the stories in Scripture? What do you mean by “prove”? Prove in a scientific sense of the word? No? Then what do you mean?

How can you prove any of the miracles of Scripture? Can you prove that Jesus actually fed the 5,000 with5 loaves and 2 fish? No? Mythos, of course! etc. etc. etc. We have to be consistent with this principle!

Oh, I got it. Your johnny come lately evolution laden godless interpretation that goes against the historical and traditional understanding of Scripture and the character of God as Creator, this interpretation that was held by the Church throughout most of history that even Jesus espoused is the real Logos and the Church and most Christians were mistaken all these years because they didn’t have the benefit of atheistic science to enlighten them. So they their trust in God and the Scriptures was unfounded and as a result they now find themselves in the uncomfortable position of believing in and teaching a Mythos! I got it! Why didn’t I see that myself? Roger, you ought to write a commentary and straighten out all the great yet misguided theologians over the centuries who got it wrong.

Right, and do you agree with the evidence on which I base that interpretation? If not, why do you view it as a figure of speech? Or do you view it as a figure of speech?

Creationists do NOT think that there is no such thing as a figure of speech, just that that is not the first “go to” interpretation whenever there is a problem. Often times, it is clear in Scripture that it is a figure of speech. Jesus might use a metaphor where He says “the kingdom of heaven is LIKE …” His parables are normally easy to identify as a parable. So of course we believe in figures of speech. This figure of speech is well known in Jewish society. So, unlike your view of the “yom” figure of speech, it would NOT have been misunderstood by the Jews or the early Church. No where in Scripture do we ever see any evidence of any writer taking Genesis as Mythos.

OK, then I guess you look at Jesus’ teaching on heaven and hell as pure Mythos, right? I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you do a complete study of the Word of God – Oh, I shouldn’t call it the Word of God, should I – since there is much in there that is not Logos. Why don’t you do a complete study of the Bible and pick out what is Logos and just X out all the Mythos so we can really know what is true and what is false. Then we really could call the Bible the Word of God.

Sure. I am aware of the idea of treating “yom” as a figure of speech, but I do not believe it fits the grammar and usage of the word in Genesis 1. It seems that you guys think that if a word is ever used in a figurative way in Scripture, that you are free to appeal to that meaning for the word anywhere and everywhere you want – regardless of context and how it is used.

Scripture - well actually the very hand of God Himself – tells us in Exodus 20 what the word “yom” means in Genesis 1. One of the most important rules in Scripture interpretation is to let the Bible interpret itself. So instead of us trying to figure it out when it might seem unclear, if it is clearly explained in another part of Scripture then we can know what it means. It clearly means a 24 hour day – just like has been understood throughout most of history – excluding the adherents to the Allegorical approach to Scripture from the Alexandrian School of St. Clement, Origen and Philo. I mean, God wrote this in stone Himself! I know of no hermeneutic that allows a person to take the same word and in one part of the verse interpret it in an allegorical way or as a figure of speech and then change the meaning to literal in the same sentence! This is simply not proper hermeneutics and it is dangerous because we can make the Bible say lots of different things if we take this approach. Using the text to make it say what you want it to - or think it should say is not proper Scripture interpretation - and that is what I think you are doing. Scripture corrects us - not the opposite way around.

This is interesting. This is highlights your approach to Scripture.

It’s almost like guilty until proved innocent or false until proved true.

Strange approach if you ask me.

So I guess that means that you also reject the Exodus even though it is woven into all of Scripture. The important thing there is not that it actually happened, but that God made up a great story to illustrate redemption and salvation. So that means that 2 of the 3 great works of God – creation and the exodus – are mythos, leaving a problem as to how to interpret the last one – crucifixion/resurrection. If the first two are mythos, why not the third one as well? Makes sense, does it not?

[quote=“Relates, post:24, topic:4203”]

We can see it took place in Nineveh, which was an important city in its time. however there is no RECORD of this event except this book, even in the OT. Imagine a prophet travels to the Moscow in the middle of the Cold War and convinces the capital of the Soviet Union and Stalin to repent, but there is no record in history of this event.

This is the “miracle” of Jonah, not the great fish (never mind the “whale.”) Nineveh repented! But the important thing is the message of Jonah, which is God cared enough about the people of Nineveh, the heart of an Evil Empire, hated by all, in order to bring them to repentance. The reason that Jonah refused to go was because he like everyone else hated Nineveh and did not want them to repent and be saved from destruction.

Jonah was angry that God was able to spare the city. Then God sent a vine to give Jonah shelter from the hot sun, which he appreciated. Then God sent a “worm” which caused the vine to quickly wither and die, and Jonah was furious. God ends the book by pointing out that just as Jonah was concerned about the welfare of a simple vine, God was concerned about a great city of 120,00 people and their cattle.

God is The GOD Who RELATES, not only to us, but all human beings and non-humans. That is the truth of Jonah and which God demonstrates every day, particularly if one has the eyes to see. it.[/quote]

OK, no arguments there. We are not disagreeing about the message of Jonah, so no need to discuss that. I might have added a bit more from chapter 1, but great. What we disagree on is the historicity of Jonah and how to approach Scripture.

My question is this. So what if you get the same message I do by reading it as a parable? Why should that be surprising? You approach the meaning of the words in that account just like I do. You don’t question what they mean. You take it in a literal sense - but you just think it is a parable, even though it is not spoken like a parable.

What I want to know is why you think this is a mythos. You told me. There is no historical record of it and you are unaware of any kind of fish that could do what this great fish did. And this implies that you do not think God did provide a great fish, even though the Bible says that He did.

Was this impossible for God to actually do in history?

Would it have been too difficult for Him to “provide a great fish” and bring a large city to repentance? Why would you think that?

Maybe the God you believe in is different than the one I believe in. I believe in an omnipotent God who is able to do whatever He wants, a God for whom nothing is impossible, a God of miracles.

Again, Jesus refers to Jonah as if he is a historical person and as if the account actually happened. And again, there is no where in Scripture that even hints that this event is not historical, so your view of this as a Mythos really has no support in the Bible.

But, you, being the 21st century Biologos sleuth that you are, found the truth. It is Mythos and not Logos! Why? Simply because it has not been proven in history and we all know that there are no fish that could swallow a man for 3 days and spit him up on the land alive. So there you have it. The text is totally irrelevant! It doesn’t matter how the Holy Spirit presents it in the Bible. It matters whether we can verify it or not.

There’s not going to be very much in your Bible when you write it, is there? Most of the OT will vanish I’m afraid because our extant historical records just do not support it.

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@Relates (I’m going to be blunt, but imagine me saying this in a friendly voice, not a hostile one) I don’t feel the need or have the time to argue about every comment anyone makes that expresses something I don’t endorse. It’s a forum, everyone can throw their two cents in. You make a lot of assertions. A lot of times they are just bare assertions, usually based on your own idiosyncratic understandings of words and concepts that other people use differently and there really isn’t an argument or progression of thought to interact with. I don’t see how a “Yes it is / No it’s not / Yes it is” kind of discussion is all that productive, and I don’t see the point in addressing assertions that just come out of nowhere and aren’t backed up by anything. I have no idea what you mean by “reality is relational” or “it is false that language is abstract.”

Right. So if extant historical records do not support it, it is Mythos! Surely this is a great example of how to “rightly divide the word of truth.”

Which in and of itself doesn’t mean much unless you are trying to say that Psalms doesn’t refer to anything historical when it refers to actual events. Job is presented as history, but there is a lot of poetry type writing in the discourses recorded between the friends.

Isaiah is in the prophetical writings section, but it deals with a lot of history. You cannot simply write off an even as historical simply because the book it is written in is not placed in the historical section of Scripture.

Unknown land? True. No mention of the law? True. Most chronological Bibles have Job living before Abraham for that reason. two tier view of reality with YHWH part of the narrative? I have no idea what the two tier view of reality is you are referring to.

Oh, so one of a kind narratives are all Mythos? Esther was also set in a foreign land as was Daniel. Of course there is theology in Job and Jonah, but that really has nothing to do with whether or not it is historical or mythical. It can be historical and still teach theology, so that really is a non-issue.

[quote=“Relates, post:25, topic:4203”]
On the other hand Esther is a short historical novel. It does not refer to God even once in the whole book, but apparently it caught the mind of the people so it became scripture. God does have a sense of humor and the ability to use different sources to make up God’s word like The Song of Songs.
[/quote]Wow! Here we see a ray of hope for your hermeneutics! You used the word “historical” as if it really happened in history. Or am I misinterpreting you? You think it is Scripture because it caught the mind of the people? That probably did have something to do with it as the acceptance of the book by people was probably one of the things scholars looked at in determining whether it belonged to the canon. Esther is one of the books that was disputed for the very reason you mentioned. It did not mention the name of God. So, did God lead in the process of putting the canon together or not? If not, then we really can have no confidence that what we have is really God’s Word. The Jews take Esther as historical, as you said. They still celebrate the festival of Purim in remembrance of this miraculous deliverance of Israel from Haman and their enemies.

Roger, of course metaphors work. And God certainly uses historical narrative to teach us spiritual truths, but that doesn’t mean the narrative is not historical or true - which you seem to be saying by pointing this out. Jesus used metaphors often and parables as well and He was a great teacher. No one is arguing that metaphors/parables do not work. We are arguing about our approach to the Word of God. How do we determine whether something is a metaphor? It matters. It seems anything and everything is a metaphor or a mythical narrative to you unless you can verify it in history or prove it - whatever that means.

This is what I disagree with because you take Scripture that is presented as history and then just claim it is Mythos. Pretty much there won’t be anything left of the Bible/faith to defend. I’m still curious as to how much of the Bible would remain if you were to take all the Mythos out of it.

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@Christy

(I’m going to be blunt, but imagine me saying this in a friendly voice, not a hostile one) You don’t have to make an excuse if you do not want to talk to me, but sometimes is better to do so.

I thought we had a good conversation going. You responded to some thing I said with a important statement about metaphor. I responded with how this connects with my view of the relational nature of reality.

Okay, you don’t want to discuss ideas on this level, but still, no response?

@tokyoguy111

If Jesus is the Logos, then the Bible is de facto Logos. The Bible is not Mythos because it is history and because it can be verified. Miracle is not the issue, except where God shows God’s power and love through the Creation, Cruxifixion, and Resurrection and there is much verification of these.

Okay, okay… :grin:

Any language can be used poetically or figuratively or to create metaphors. Any language can be used to describe science. Are you really asserting that Hebrew is somehow objectively “more poetic” than Greek or English? I don’t know what to do with that. It is a subjective value judgment that cannot be supported empirically. How is Greek being a language with prepositions as opposed to postpositions or no adpositions at all relevant? The grammar of a given language just determines the form in which meaning is communicated, it doesn’t determine that certain meanings can’t be communicated. The language I study doesn’t have abstract nouns. It doesn’t mean the people can’t communicate about abstract concepts, it just means they express them with headless relative clauses, not nouns.

The gospel is intrinsically translatable, so there isn’t anything sacred or holy about the original languages of Scripture. Whereas other religions have sacred texts that may not be translated, Christians have translation at the heart of their tradition. Koine Greek is the language of the street and only Luke and the author of Hebrews approach a formal literary form of Greek in the New Testament. Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are usually from the Septuagint, showing that that NT authors did not rely on the Hebrew version, they used a translation. Furthermore, many of the original participants in the events described in the Gospels probably spoke Greek as a second language and spoke Aramaic some of the time, so what is recorded in the Gospels may very well be translations of Aramaic conversations. Pentecost was an event that translated the gospel into a wide variety of languages and affirmed the idea that the language in which the gospel is communicated is not the important part, it’s the message.

Says who? I have never heard anything like this as a definition for absolute truth. “Free from relationships” is not what people generally mean when the mean absolute truth. In fact, most of the time people are talking about “moral absolutes” relationships are implied, because most morality involves how you treat other people. We aren’t talking about Plato’s forms.

Postmodernism is a philosophical approach that deals with meaning making and epistemology. It does not attempt to “explain change like evolution.”

This makes no sense to me. It just looks like word salad.

“Metaphor” doesn’t bridge the gap between modernity and postmodernity, because they are totally different philosophical systems based on totally different presuppositions. You either approach a question from a modernist standpoint or you approach a question from a postmodernist standpoint. Who is trying to “reconcile” the two approaches, and what would be the point?

Really? Who? What philosopher or linguist or theologian is attempting to reconcile modernity and postmodernity through “relational metaphor”?

Does “relational language” have a definition I could look up somewhere? You are right that John is not talking in a parable here, he is using a metaphor. It is figurative language that could indeed be reduced to propositions with truth values, though it would lose some meaning. We can make true propositions about relationships “propositional” and “relational” are not opposing ideas.

You can’t just invoke the transitive property and say Jesus = Logos = God’s word = language therefore, everything that is true about Jesus is true about about language.

I have never understood your non-standard understanding of Logos. The Logos in John refers to the second person of the Trinity. The Word sent from God, Jesus, is not the same referrent as the word of God (special revelation) or plain old “words.”

Language is a semiotic system. Symbols rely on abstractions. Words are arbitrary signs. Saying, “language is not abstract, it is relational” has no meaning to me. “Abstract” is not in opposition to “relational.”

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If I can give your three likes I would, but the site permits only one. Somehow I don’t think “Relates” will get it.

That is not a value judgement. That is a generalization, and like all generalizations it is not absolute. However all our knowledge is based on generalizations. In this case it means that the Hebrew language is more specific and concrete than the Greek and uses many more metaphors. For instance the Hebrew for “Almighty God” is El shaddai of God of the angelic armies. The Greek word for almighty is “omnipotent,” which creates a new more abstract word from Greek stems.

Greek and Hebrew are different empirically. From this one can infer that they are used differently and encourage a different outlook on life. The Jews and the Greeks were different and Jesus came to reconcile them and us through His death and His teaching.

English has absorbed many different kinds of language over time. Basic Anglo-Saxon wards have been added to by French Latinate and Greek words, as well as borrowed words from Arabic and other languages. This diversity strengthens the language and facilitates communication.

“Free from relationships” is not what people generally mean when the mean absolute truth.

The roots of the word “absolute” are “abso” meaning “no” and “lute” which is a form of relates mean no relationships. To be absolute means to be pure and therefore not related to anything else. This is a Greek philosophical term which has found its way into Christian theology, where it does not belong because God is not Absolute, God is not unrelated, because God is Love.

The problem is not the translation of the Bible from Hebrew into Greek. The problem is the translation of one world view into another. Jesus Christ came into the world not just to reconciles individuals, but to reconcile Jews with Gentiles, and Greeks with Barbarians. What emerged was neither Jewish theology or Greek philosophy, but the best of both.

However what we have does not reach the full potential the relational nature of good Christian theology. Science to a real extent is knocking against old boundaries of Greek thought. Christianity does not have the knowledge or confidence to think it can go beyond Greek dualistic thinking in understanding the universe.

Language is a semiotic system. Symbols rely on abstractions. Words are arbitrary signs. Saying, “language is not abstract, it is relational” has no meaning to me. “Abstract” is not in opposition to “relational.”

Here is where I differ from you and others. For me a word represents something. It is a representation, no an abstraction. When I am talking about myself, Roger, I am talking about myself, not some symbol or abstraction. When I use the word God, I am talking about the Lord of Heaven and earth. That does not mean that what I say is correct, but what is say is real as far as I can determine it.

When YHWH God gave the commandment, Do not take the Name of YHWH in vain, First of all God meant that words were real and important. Second, God told us that that we must be careful to make proper use of real meanings of words, esp. when talking about God and Who God is. God also told us not the lie or deliberately misuse words, or as Jesus said, Satan is the Father (or Source) of all lies.

We do not know God in the abstract. We do not know what God is. We know what God does, in particularly how God relates to us and our world. We really do not know what something “is,” but we know what it looks like, how it feels, and how it works. That is what it means to know relationally through relational language.

@Eddie, thank you for catching the mistake of misusing the word “prepositional” for “propositional.”

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@Eddie,

You are a good editor.

Omnipotent is Latin, while pantokrator is Greek.

I did get the etymology wrong so I will give you what it says in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion by William L. Reece, 1980 Humanities Press, p. 2.

Absolute, from the Latin absolutus meaning “perfect” or “completed.” The term stands opposes to the relative and simply means the negation of the relative, i. e., as in that which is independent of relation. The term implies the sense of the fixed, the independent, the unqualified, the completed. Emphasis added.

Jesus’ work reconciled cultures, for sure, but I think you are giving too much credit to language for shaping thought. It is a chicken and egg argument. Do cultures develop along certain lines because they have a certain language to describe their reality, or do they describe their reality in certain ways because they are culturally disposed to? Most linguists think languages develop to meet the needs and reflect the values of the culture, not vice, versa. The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity has been largely discredited. Ask A Linguist FAQ: The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

“Absolute truth” is a concept. It is totally irrelevant what the etymology of the word “absolute” is if we are talking about “what do people mean by absolute truth” because the etymology of an adjective is not what constructs concepts. Words are arbitrary signs with agreed upon ranges of meaning determined by the community of users of the language. Words don’t have any inherent objective meaning in and of themselves. If nobody uses words the way you do, you can’t say you have some secret insight into what words really mean.

You are confusing words and referents though. The referent (the real person Roger, the real being God) is not always an abstraction, but the phonetic label that constitutes the English word is an arbitrary symbol. The words themselves are meaningless unless you have two people using the same word to refer to a common referent. I think it is often hard to communicate with you because you decide words refer to referents no one else agrees they refer to.

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@Christy
Okay, lets talk about “Absolute Truth.” If the Bible is the Absolute Truth, that is the Word of God, then it would be absolutely true that the universe was created in 6 days and all the discussion and evidence to the contrary is meaningless.

From talking to them I find that the YEC believe that the Bible is Absolute Truth, which is the reason why BioLogos has a difficult problem in changing the minds of YEC’s. Because they live in a Western culture, they give lip service to science and evidence, but their mindset is based on Absolute Truth which is not scientific or Christian.

Now it is difficult for evangelicals to argue against the Bible as Absolute Truth, because that it what they have been taught theologically. BioLogos seems to want to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to say that the Bible is Absolute Truth, so it does not put off Evangelicals, when theologically it must accept the fact that the Bible is not Absolute Truth.

The question if the Bible is not Absolute Truth, then what is it? If it is not relativistic truth, which it is not, then it is relational Truth, which it is. However adjusting to the whole concept of relational think is not simple, though it is rewarding, so people would rather not do it.

You are correct in saying that our language is shaped and determined by our community. Part of the problem is that we live in many communities, so we have to shape our language to communicate to each one of them. Paul said that he spoke to each community that he shared the gospel with as one of them. This was not because he was a pagan, but because he wanted to speak in the language and thought world of the pagan Gentile.

In BioLogos we claim to be Christians (which does not mean that non-Christians are excluded.). To me that is the basis of our discussion of faith, biology, and Reality. People do not agree with the way I understand and use the Biblical concept of the Logos. I know that, but does that mean that I should give into their understanding when it is very clear to me that Jesus Christ is the eternal Word/Logos (not Mythos) of God as stated in John 1.

I also disagree with how some people think evolution works, which is why I make a distinction between ecological evolution and Darwinian evolution. That seems to offend some, but it keeps referents straight.

The Logos, the Bible, and Christian theology is the basis of our discussion here as I understand it and certainly try to practice it.

I do not deny that there is a concept of “Absolute Truth,” but it is not the Bible, nor is it Christian. Absolute Truth is Mythos and not Logos (and as such is not true.) It needs to be recognized as such.