Can’t be done – the human mind can’t grasp God, and thus cannot grasp Christ.
Πιστεύω εἰς ἕνα Θεόν, Πατέρα, Παντοκράτορα, ποιητὴν οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς, ὁρατῶν τε πάντων καὶ ἀοράτων.
I believe in one God the Father, almighty maker of heaven and earth, both all things visible and invisible;
[Deuteronomy 6: 4, Ephesians 4: 6; Matthew 6: 9; Exodus 6: 3; Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1: 15-16]
Καὶ εἰς ἕνα Κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν, τὸν Υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ, τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων·
and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the unique Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages:
[Acts 11: 17; John 1: 18; 3: 16; Mathew 14: 33; 16: 16; John 1: 2]
Θεὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ, φῶς ἐκ φωτός, Θεὸν ἀληθινὸν ἐκ Θεοῦ ἀληθινοῦ,
God from God, light from light, true God from true God,
[Psalm 27: 1; John 8: 12; Matthew 17: 2,5; John 17: 1-5]
γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί, δι’ οὗ τὰ πάντα ἐγένετο.
begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, through Him all things were made;
[John 1: 18; John 10: 30; Hebrews 1: 1-2]
Τὸν δι’ ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν κατελθόντα ἐκ τῶν οὐρανῶν
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven
[1 Timothy 2: 4-5; John 6: 33,35]
καὶ σαρκωθέντα ἐκ Πνεύματος Ἁγίου καὶ Μαρίας τῆς Παρθένου καὶ ἐνανθρωπήσαντα.
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man;
[Luke 1: 35; John 1: 14]
Σταυρωθέντα τε ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἐπὶ Ποντίου Πιλάτου, καὶ παθόντα καὶ ταφέντα.
also was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried
[Mark 15: 25; 1 Corinthians 15: 3; John 19: 6; Mark 8: 31; Luke 23: 53; 1 Corinthians 15: 4]
Καὶ ἀναστάντα τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ κατὰ τὰς Γραφάς.
and rose again the third day in accordance with the scriptures,
[Luke 24: 1 1 Corinthians 15: 4; Luke 24: 51; Acts 1: 10]
Καὶ ἀνελθόντα εἰς τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ καθεζόμενον ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Πατρός.
and ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father;
[Luke 24: 51; Acts 1: 10; Mark 16: 19; Acts 7: 55]
Καὶ πάλιν ἐρχόμενον μετὰ δόξης κρῖναι ζῶντας καὶ νεκρούς,
and he shall come again with glory to judge those living and dead,
[Matthew 24: 27; Acts 10: 42; 2 Timothy 4: 1]
οὗ τῆς βασιλείας οὐκ ἔσται τέλος.
whose kingdom shall have no end.
[2 Peter 1: 11]
Καὶ εἰς τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον, τὸ κύριον, τὸ ζῳοποιόν,
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
[John 14: 26; Acts 5: 3-4; Genesis 1: 2]
τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον,
Who proceeds from the Father,
[John 15: 26]
τὸ σὺν Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ συμπροσκυνούμενον καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον,
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
[Matthew 3: 16-17]
τὸ λαλῆσαν διὰ τῶν προφητῶν.
Who spoke through the prophets.
[1 Samuel 19: 20; Ezekiel 11: 5,13]
Εἰς μίαν, Ἁγίαν, Καθολικὴν καὶ Ἀποστολικὴν Ἐκκλησίαν.
And in one holy catholic and apostolic church.
[Matthew 16: 18; Ephesians 2:16; Ephesians 2:20]
Ὁμολογῶ ἓν βάπτισμα εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν.
And I believe in one baptism for the remission of sins,
[Ephesians 4: 5; Acts 2: 38]
Προσδοκῶ ἀνάστασιν νεκρῶν. Καὶ ζωὴν τοῦ μέλλοντος αἰῶνος.
and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the age to come.
[John 11: 24; 1 Corinthians 15: 12-49; Hebrews 6: 2; Revelation 20: 5; Mark 10: 29-30]
The references are neither exhaustive nor necessarily the best examples, but should suffice; they’re what I could find reasonably quickly.
Nice. I’m glad we can agree on that. I would also add, that there is this thing that ultimately limits our knowledge, and that’s the possibility of events not really happening. I actually had a conversation with an atheist that maintained events do not really occur in the world. Ironically, I would grant that it is a rational possibility, but it isn’t atheism. What a world we live in!
Thanks for the friendly discussion. And thanks for bringing the book on xtian nationalism to my attention, I needed to know about that.
Satan doesn’t care if anyone “follows” him and certainly doesn’t ask anyone to do so; all he cares is that people not follow God.
So you do believe that Satan is very good – that he was/is necessary to give us a choice.
What charge is that? Do you mean his declaration “I will be like God?” That didn’t “demand” anything except that Satan be given the boot.
You give so much attention to Satan, much of it not found in the scriptures, that your theology is not Christian at all.
The fact that there is no point citing scripture until you have done your homework concerning the original language, the original literary genre, the original worldview, and the rest of the original context does not require any Bible quotes, it’s just what’s needed to have a clue what you’re talking about. Once again,
That’s something you have never done, because you refuse to grapple with original language, the original literary genre, the original worldview, and the rest of the original context. If you have not done those things, you aren’t actually reading the scriptures in the first place, you’re only putting your own ideas into a set of words on a page.
It seems you’ve fallen into the unbiblical teaching that the Bible is the only thing necessary to know anything at all.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
No, you’re wrong because she (and others here) have done their homework, and you have not.
I started doing my homework when I got tired of hearing ten different preachers talking about a single text say, “What the Greek means is…” and get a dozen different views – so I started with ancient Greek and worked my way to the New Testament. I pursued this course by adding Hebrew, and even threw in Latin because so much commentary on the scriptures is still in Latin. I further studied the ancient near east culture and worldviews in order to understand where the writers of the Old Testament were coming from.
So you’re either misreading or misrepresenting what Christy wrote, and given that you seem to have some proficiency with the English language I don’t think it’s the first option.
There’s the big hole in your reasoning (and Adam’s): you deny that scholarship is necessary to understand God’s word. What you end up doing, then, is assuming that you all by yourself reading some modern translation(s) can grasp the intent of the ancient authors. That’s a very dangerous as well as arrogant and insulting position – insulting both to all of us here and to the Holy Spirit who, after all, never promised things would be easy.
Yes, because without that you aren’t actually reading the scriptures, you’re only reading into them. Without them, you’re stuck in your modern worldview and don’t have the first clue about what the original writer(s) intended or what their audiences would have understood.
Several people here have graduate degrees relevant to the topic.
Which is exactly what you’re doing with this canned YEC argument: taking a modern idea of what is “good” and imposing it on the scriptures.
What’s tragic about this is that the very same groups who do this generally also condemn Roman Catholicism for doctrines that came about in the very same way: viewing scripture through their own worldview instead of seeking to understand the worldview that God actually spoke through.
Here’s the thing: Christ IS “Azazeel”: He is the one onto whom sin and responsibility is laid, and Who is “cast out” to die. That’s where Paul gets “he became sin for us”!
This is why the Christian study center near my university presented a course on worldviews – though it made a point you skipped: first one must recognize that one even has a worldview and then examine its tenets! That was a difficult leap for many of the students who took that course, even with the help of a couple of great books:
These ought to be required reading for anyone wanting to discuss Genesis.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
That’s what Paul means when he says creation is groaning – it’s burdened by our presence in it.
We know that “evil” as in natural catastrophes are things that God makes/causes since He plainly declares that. Thus these things could have been part of what was “very good” since God does not make things that aren’t good, and it is the summation of all the good things that make the whole “very good”.
We also know that God provides prey animals to predators; that claim is made as well, and it is called “good”. Eating prey involves death, so we know that death can qualify as “good”.
And thus we have a universe that prior to man had disasters and death, a universe that God called “very good”.
It should also be mentioned in this connection that to say that a creature is made from the dust of the earth was an ancient near eastern way of saying that creature is mortal.
Plus both it and its cognates in other ancient near east languages is used to denote that something “works right” – which does not entail a guarantee that humans will find it in the least pleasing.
It was also necessary because He was God – a truth that makes any comparison with ordinary human death tenuous.
Here we see a – perhaps THE – big problem: you think that because you can understand some of Einstein’s statements in English then your reading of the opening of Genesis in English is just as valid.
It isn’t, and it’s arrogant to assume it is.
That’s a “view of man”. The Greek word θεόπνευστος (theh-O-pknew-stohs), “God-breathed”, does not mean God told anyone what to write; it most likely means that He imbued them with certain concepts and left it to them how to set those into words.
Sure we can, because it doesn’t mean “exactly what it says” – a better rendition would be “Don’t murder”, which is not at all the same as “Don’t kill”.
Well, whether it does or not is irrelevant since that doesn’t come from scripture.
“Meandering”? No, ignoring since by now you’ve made the false claim that anyone here is saying what you wrote, and you’ve been told multiple times that no one is saying what you wrote.
Finally – an admission that you’re following the interpretations of sinful men!
is a great way to lead people to think of scripture in a particular way.
Yes – one could say that the authority is behind the text.
Something of a modern parallel could be a warranty: the warranty is only as good as whoever declares it.
The passage is declaring that very thing: the text has all those properties because of the One behind the text.
No. They are not about reality at all. They are just for entertainment. And if the Bible were like those books then I might still read it for entertainment but I wouldn’t pretend they had anything to do with reality.
The things we experience in everyday life.
That includes God. It does not include magical fruit, talking animals, and golems of dust and bone. It also include the things of science including all the overwhelming evidence of evolution. Since God is spirit, then the spiritual is real, including the spirit bodies Paul speaks of 1 Corinthians 15. I haven’t experienced angels but they are spirit and since spirit is real and they make sense, I have no reason to believe they do not exist.
Who is correct, a fallible sinful man projecting upon reality how he interprets what is in a book written thousands of years ago, or a man listening and hearing what God is saying in all the data God sends us in the earth and sky? Do you have a better idea of what is real than God does?
It is just looking at the text in Hebrew and not just some guy trying to force the meaning into what he wants it to mean.
And the problem is that the same phrase מ֥וֹת תָּמֽוּת used elsewhere in the Bible clearly means no such thing. So I don’t believe the source you have quoted is correct.
No I did not call you a scoffer. Only you did that. And what you believe isn’t in general revelation but is your interpretation of that general revelation. I believe the same revelation but I don’t interpret it in a way to contradict what God tells us in all the data He sends us in the earth and sky.
What is in scripture Genesis 1:25 is that God said it was good. But while you interpret this to mean something contrary to the scientific evidence I find meaning that agrees with the scientific evidence.
I just want to make clear that my point is the problem of evil is also a problem for your view. You are engaging with many people on a lot of different subjects so I just want to try to focus this response on that one issue because that was my claim. It’s a problem for everyone. You have tried to weaponize the POE against theistic evolution and I agreed it’s a significant challenge/serious issue worth investigating morally, emotionally, logically and scripturally. As I noted there are potential responses. We can look to Hick, Stump, Plantinga etc. that ultimately the POE is not insolvable or logically damaging to theistic belief in a benevolent God. It does create some frictions with parts of scripture. That I do not deny. But we all try to explain why bad things happen in the world. You have your theological fabric softener and I have mine. But for Christians to weaponize the problem of evil against other Christians is a poor witness as this is generally the chief concern of all non-believers. It’s just free press for atheism. I would take a different approach to be honest.
You state God views all history as a line on the table in front of him but you can’t possibly know this. You are asserting your opinion about how God experiences time and human causality as fact. You are using this to defend your take on why people suffer through natural disasters in the world. I am not 100% sold on open view theism but I’m not sold on classical theism either. I don’t know that your rationalization of God punishing everyone for Adam Eve’s sin is rationally or logically sound or if it’s even remotely true.
You say we all sinned. Yes I read Romans 5 too. In general I agree but not in the same way as you in all likelihood. I think evolution makes actions most people deem “sin” likely. I also think Paul may be arguing more corporately in parts of Romans (Jews vs Gentiles) so I would not overdress the details. They may be natural hyperbole. Now you are using this to claim God knows all people are sinners and is justified in subjecting them to a fallen sinful world with earthquakes and cancer before they ever actually sin. Even if proved to be true I find that troubling. That is also a major assumption asserted as fact. You seem to be confusing causes and effects from my perspective. The latter usually are supposed to come after in rational thought. You are trying to do this by imagining God with extra-dimensions of time. This is about as close to just making things up as you can get–even if it’s true, as I have no way of actually evaluating it. Again, I am not saying you are wrong but that the problem of evil is not so easy for you either. You have to conjure up all sorts of rationalizations. I can do the same. Anyone can.
You are also not offering any explanation for why young children suffer tremendously and die before they are ever old enough to truly sin. Your argument COMPLETELY misses this group. They suffer through the fault of others and thus your solution to the POE is still troubling. Go to a cancer ward where young children die. Blaming Adam and Eve or a hypothetical fantasy land where God knows these children would have sinned if they lived is just you making things up to solve a problem. It also raises serious questions about free will.
Not to mention, as @Christy pointed out, in Christian thought, Satan was in the Garden. This is not found in Jewish thought but Christian’s do view the serpent as the Devil. So God’s good creation had an evil, trickster in it that helped usher in the fall of humanity.
You also seem to think everyone everywhere is a sinner worthy of a cursed world before they ever actually sin. Again, I have trouble with the causes coming after the effects but if everyone who ever lived or will live is in this predicament, this looks like a design flaw of the creator. How do 100 billion humans get it wrong? Trial after trial? A trillion people from now? Again, not saying you can’t wiggle out of this but please don’t pretend like your literal garden story with the talking snake is some great answer to the POE. It is not. God looks petty and vindictive as times. The deck looks rigged. Is God punishing us for not being God? Again, the literal garden story does not provide any simple answers to natural evil and suffering. Its a problem for you as well.
At the end of the day, evolutionary Christianity struggles with reality as well because we seem to have some baggage we need to overcome. I think a lot of our proclivity to sin is based on evolutionary baggage. Primate aggression and we are certainly geared to “be fruitful and multiply.” We have some strong biological compulsions. They are systemic to a degree. Evolution doesn’t force our actions, but it does compel certain ones quite strongly. God giving us away to our evil desires doesn’t seem to work too well in this framework because those desires are from the natural order. It seems the “good” creation is something we actually need to overcome. Maybe that is what makes it "good.’ It builds character, perseverance and the soul. Again, what kind of an existence is being ignorant and petting lions in Eden forever?
The punishment in the garden also doesn’t fit the crime either. It’s super-overkill. I also don’t think 100 billion people deserve eternal conscious torment for finite crimes but maybe you believe in annihilation? But also pains in child birth, cancer, drought, floods, etc. because they ate some fruit while not really knowing good and evil?
The scientific evidence is cancer, death and disease existed long before humans ever showed up. Thus, your response to the POE stands against pretty much all of mainstream science. Again, it is not an easy answer. The POE is very much a problem for a literal Genesis.
So sure, I have to contend with cancer being a part of God’s good creation, but maybe instead of you pawning off a demonstrably wrong view of the world based on a literal reading of an ancient creation myth, maybe you could dive in and help us actually solve this thing? That’s the biggest problem with conservatives. They spend so much time and resources answering all the wrong questions. So when you say, “I don’t see the problem” I think a little more humility is in order when discussing the problem of evil. We all are faced with this problem. Your view is provides no clear or obvious solution when the details are actually taken to task.
I’m not buying that. The entire purpose of the OT? That is pretty offensive to Jews and Jesus completely disagrees with you when he summed up the law and prophets. He didn’t mention any modern conservative babble about infinite separation from God and the need for a blood sacrifice. He summed up the law and prophets as loving God and dining into others. The Law is great in the OT (see Psalm 119) not some impossible standard dooming everyone to failure. That does not take all the Old Testament seriously. It just proof-text hunts Pauline theology.
Also, you are advocating penal substitution, not something all Christian’s agree with. Paul is trying hard to explain Jesus in light of the Gentile spread of the Jesus movement. He is not always cogent in his arguments. He waffles on the law quite badly.
By next stage I mean next destination. You think it’s final. Maybe it is or maybe heaven is a process. I don’t pretend to know much about it aside from it being a place I want to go to.
I think there is little doubt that much of scripture treats the OT stories as something that actually happened. I mean, the genealogy in 1 Chronicles 1 and Luke 3 would be pretty weird otherwise. But if scripture is accommodated then even scripture’s view of scripture is accommodated. And scripture disagrees with itself a lot and even Jesus pointed out his disagreement with the part of the Mosaic dispensation allowing a certificate of divorce.
Random to who? Himself? The Devil? God? I prefer a solidarity model where we hold ourselves captive. The ransom is paid to us.
A valid point for many references but I don’t think genealogies fit here though. I think most NT authors probably believed the figures they mentioned were actual people who lived in the past. They don’t distinguish between Moses, David, Noah, Abraham, Adam, etc. To that we could also include angelic beings. Some of their arguments even seem to require this to make sense. I think reading ancient commentaries also confirms this along with something like the Historian Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews. He starts right in the beginning. I don’t think they were all literalists like conservatives today but I doubt they thought the details of their salvation history are mostly made up like modern scholars do. There were exceptions like Maimonides but again, exceptions, not the rule. For me, on purely historical grounds, I’d say many of these references were believed to correspond to things that actually happened in the past. it might be best to just view things like how the NT views the OT as part of the accommodation process itself. That was their background knowledge whereas for the authors of Genesis 1-11 it was wider Mesopotamian culture and mythology. Jesus can be a different story. I suspect how one understands Jesus’s allusion to Noah will depend in part on their Christology. Is it the human Jesus who had to grow in knowledge and wisdom of the Word of God who made all things that is speaking?
I don’t think mainstream science should make that assumption. Science works under the principle that reality is ordered. Uniformitarianism if you will. There is consistency in the nature. So much so that things can be observed, defined, modeled, related and predicted. But science says nothing of why there is something rather than nothing and tells us nothing about the ultimate origin of its underlying laws. It assumes uniformitarianism because, pragmatically, it works. What it says is that we don’t need to appeal to magical beings to explain things like rainfall. We have the water cycle and the Bergeron process. In doing so we can now model the atmosphere globally and predict weather events days in advance. As a Christian I believe science is simply discovering the form and function of God’s creation that He upholds. Science is a domain of knowledge separate from faith. To steal Gould’s phrasing, they are “non overlapping magisteria.” Only in the case of Biblical literalists do they overlap because in that framework the Bible tells us the earth does not move, there is a solid dome in the sky blocking rain and separating the heavens, and the earth is 6,000 years old. Science has shown all of these things to be false. The Bible just doesn’t get science right. There are a number of incorrect ideas throughout. Even Jesus says some questionable things.
The son of man went to the center of the earth? Who knew Hades/Sheol/Hell was made of solid iron-nickel. Then take a look at this verse in Mark 13:
But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
25 and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
26 “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. 27 Then he will send out the angels and gather the[e] elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
I don’t want to nitpick so I’ll leave out that the moon only reflects light, but are stars tiny objects that can fall from the heavens and land on our planet? Revelation 6 likens them to figs falling off a tree due to a strong wind. At the end of the day the Bible reflects the ancient cosmology of its times. God speaks to us through those ancient beliefs. Even Jesus appears to do the same at many points.
Have you never actually looked into different models of atonement? Or do you think a wooden model of penal substitution is the only one in all of Christianity the last 2,000 years?
I agree but it’s beside the point I was trying to make. YECs like to pretend that the fact that Jesus referenced a figure/text proves the figure is historical or the text is factual. Maybe this is logical if you factor in some other ideas about what the Bible is and does or Jesus being all-knowing, but it’s not some kind of rule of hermeneutics that if Jesus mentions a name, that person has to be historical and Jesus has to believe that person is historical, and everything recorded about that person is factual.
(I started to say I wish I’d had that phrase back in grad school, but I’m not sure fabric softener was around yet – or maybe I just couldn’t afford them.)
There’s an argument I’ve seen a few times that makes sense of the expulsion from the Garden: that having the Garden was a bestowal of a “fief” under a covenant, and when they broke the covenant then their “title” to the Garden was made void. A nice aspect of that is that the curse about thorns and such isn’t a change God makes in the world, it’s just a condition they hadn’t had to deal with in the Garden but is normal in the untamed outside.
My sole point was the idea that “we made evil” via a literal interpretation of Genesis 2-3 doesn’t really resolve the problem very easily. We can certainly explain it in a lot of different ways. But I still think the punishment seems a bit on the overkill side especially since they seem very much like innocent children–albeit full grown.
How does that view explain this:
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
Honestly, it looks also like an etiology to me on why life is so hard (drought, plague, toiling) and why pregnancy was so painful (and had an iffy success rate). I think the account is just more practical. That or in its extant form as the Torah was being put together, its about the Babylonian exile.
I cannot comment on the rest of the work but his section on Gospel reliability is absolutely horrible.
As if a few eyewitnesses of a small and obscure cult could control texts and beliefs all throughout the Roman Empire many decades later hundreds or thousands of miles away in a time without fast travel or telecommunictions. If the gospels were written 65-90 the number of authoritative eyewitnesses would be few and we simply know Christians disagree on lots of things early as they do today. Sire writes this:
Maybe amateur skeptics articulated such ideas but most critical scholars and professional historians today do not argue in this manner. These are caricatures through and through. Here is a list by [the sex offender] Pervo (Mystery of Acts and repeated in Hermeneia) of the impediments of taking Acts as history (similar ones can be drawn upon for the Gospels).
We see that critical scholars put forth much more nuanced and difficult arguments. And look at this gem from Sire:
No the general rule is not to assume your beliefs are true and anyone who disagrees with you has the burden of proof. That is not how academic history works. That is a lie apologists sell because they ultimately cannot justify gospel reliability on historical grounds–whether it were true or false. Our sources are simply too limited in most cases. Here is what Pervo writes in Hermeneia:
What Sire does here is wrong. He writes:
Tying faith to the historical reliability of the Gospels is not going to end any better for Christianity than tying faith to a literal Genesis. Not to mention, just like science, history operates under the assumption of methodological naturalism and can scarcely deal with miracles which by definition are the most improbable of all events.
I think you pointed out in here, quite correctly, how its Christian first, authority of scripture second and not the other way around. Every time I see a “historical reliability of the gospels” argument my first response, along with a facepalm, is the person is going down a one way street in the wrong direction. Sire does this. I am not a Christian because I can prove the Bible is God’s word and therefore, accept what it narrates. Rather, the Bible serves as my Sacred Scripture because I am a Christian.
Apparently I need to re-read it. What I remember from both books is that what you think depends on your worldview, which is a critical point that YECists ignore.
Hey y’all, I apologize for my tardiness. I’ve been driving the highways and byways of Arkansas with nary the cell service to call home.
However, I’ve had plenty of time to think. Despite the best wishes of all parties, I feel we have gotten stuck in the weeds over meaningless side issues, passing by the original point of the conversation. In this post I would like to clarify my position and try and sort some of the confusion. I’m not going to respond to everything here for the sake of clarity and brevity. (unless I get bored later )
My original intent in defining my terms was to simply provide background for what I was talking about, whether right or wrong or disagreeable. However, through the course of various posts, the issue between definitions and premises became confused.
To clarify: I am happy to work with whatever definitions y’all consider accurate and acceptable. In the case of any confusion between dictionary definitions and what I think y’all mean, I’ll ask for clarification, and I hope y’all will do the same for me. I won’t take all premises as true (I’m sure we have reasonable disagreements over premises), as I believe that premises strongly influence your end conclusion (whether logical or illogical).
I believe the original issue here is whether or not we believe the events in the Bible actually happened as described, or whether the text is mythological, pseudo-myth, “king’s chronicle”, or any of the other designations and genres applied when the text is not said to have happened as described. When I use the words “history” and “historical” this is what I mean: events or items that actually happened, as Oxford dictionary defines it; study of the past. I believe the Bible is indeed historical and happened as described. Since I believe this is the core issue, I’ll answer the related posts down below to the best of my ability. (along with a few nuts and bolts)
I do. There’s no mechanism. Life has never been demonstrated to come from non-life. We can’t successfully simulate the proposed processes necessary even in a modern lab, much less observe them in nature. DNA is an incredibly complex language system that is read positionally in three dimensions, right hand or left, and the change of a single gene can be catastrophic to an organism’s ability to survive. For the creatures we see today to have evolved, millions upon billions of new genes would’ve had to have randomly come into existence in perfect position with each other, along with a system to read the information. Even if genetic information were to form spontaneously, DNA is a fragile molecule and quickly degrades–it can’t last without the protective mechanism of a cell.
I think scholarship is extremely important. I just don’t think it’s more important than Scripture. I have no degree myself, but I’m currently at college for the purpose of Biblical studies, learning under those who have far more knowledge than I.
Is morality absolute?
So i’m wrong because you assume that I don’t know what I’m talking about so I must be… wrong? So I’m wrong because I’m wrong about what I believe… so i’m wrong because I’m wrong. Foolishness! Even a child can read a paper written by experts, not understanding a word of what he says, and be right in the statement of ideas.
You also have no idea of my education. That’s a blind statement making assumptions about someone you’ve never met and know only from discourse on this forum. Y’all are very knowledgeable on this forum, which is something I appreciate, but, as I’ve been taught through my other occupations, being “an expert”, makes one no more right than anyone on the street. It only gives one a foundation for one’s belief, whether right or wrong.
This begs the question: is something false simply because you have not seen or experienced it?
Who is correct: the fallible, sinful man reading the recorded words and accounts of God and interpreting them as best he can, or the man looking at the current creation, which cannot speak? The answer is neither. Neither of those viewpoints makes one right, but starting from Scripture eliminates a step: we know what God said, all we have to do is interpret what He means. Versus attempting to construct a valid history while interpreting not only what God said (if He is indeed saying anything through what we are looking at during any one moment), but translating it from a language of earth and sky into something human. This is the difference between General and Special revelation.
For example, Special revelation is reading the note and pricetag the potter wrote, describing what he’s made, how it should be taken care of, and its purpose. General is looking at the creation and working from there. We can still make inferences (God is a God of design and purpose), but we cannot look at earth and sky and determine that God chose Abraham to carry the covenant line of Jesus thousands of years ago.
Who is more likely to see the right answer? The fallible man reading the words of the potter, or the fallible man peering at the pot?
You’re saying, in paraphrase, “I believe in the same revelation but I don’t interpret general revelation in a way to contradict general revelation.” Is this correct?
You mean, your conclusions based of what evidence you can observe with the tools we have at our disposal? Evidence cannot speak for itself, it must be interpreted. In short, you’re finding meaning that agrees with your arbitrary conclusions?
I disagree with your conclusion (as I will discuss), but I greatly appreciate the well-thought-out and targeted response.
First of all, physical suffering and death are consequences of the curse–effective upon all creation, but whether or not young children and babies can be condemned to spiritual death for sin is an entirely different question.
Most Christians I’ve found believe in some sort of age of accountability, where before this age God simply shows grace, or the child is incapable of sin. I find this illogical and unscriptural–any greedy, fearful, or angry thought is sin, and everyone who’s been a parent or had younger siblings knows how disobedient and nasty small children can be. David stated that he came from the womb in sin. God is perfectly just, so how could He ignore any sin or the sin nature we have from Adam (…for in Adam all die…).
I believe that the thought of “innocent” children experiencing spiritual death is repulsive to some, so they try to cope with it. God is just, no matter how innocent or sweet someone may appear.
It was a metaphor. God is eternal, knowing no beginning or end. He exists at all points on the timeline. I can’t possibly know that He views time as a line, but He does see everything throughout all of time at once. I wasn’t trying to portray the consequences of our personal sin as cancer and suffering. Cancer is a result of sin, but not ours; Adam’s. The whole creation groans.
Order of events: God called creation very good before Satan fell.
No one is worthy of anything. We’re created by God, not the other way around. We can’t decide what we deserve or what we’re worthy of. How do 100 billion humans get it wrong? We have a sin nature; we are by very nature separated from God, and without God there is no good. Our sin is a natural consequence of our separation from God; an absence of perfect goodness. Sin is not an action, it’s a state of being. We are born in the state of being of separation from God.
We separated ourselves from the perfect design of a perfect God. We left his plan. His plan wasn’t flawed; we became flawed. In fact, we are worthy of death, both spiritual and physical. We’re worthy of every consequence that comes from separation from God.
I don’t believe in annihilation. The torment described is simply separation from God, and from all things good. It’s not even a punishment, it’s a consequence; the withdrawal of God’s temporary mercy from those who continue to reject Him.
Adam and Eve knew what they were doing. God told them. The perfect, infinite, just God who created them and walked with them told them they should eat from every tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They ate in pride, desiring to be God just as Satan had desired, and the result was the breaking of perfect fellowship with God.
Galatians 3:10-29:
"10 For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law, to perform them.” 11 Now that no one is justified the Law before God is evident; for, “The righteous man shall live by faith.” 12 However, the Law is not of faith; on the contrary, “He who practices them shall live by them.” 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”— 14 in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
Intent of the Law
15 Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations: even though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. 16 Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ. 17 What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. 18 For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.
19 Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made. 20 Now a mediator is not for one party only; whereas God is only one. 21 Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God? May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. 22 But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.
23 But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. 24 Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith.25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. 26 For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to promise.
Psalms 104 is poetry. The word for “firmament” is now understood to mean expanse. There’s an expanse of space between the waters on earth and the waters somewhere above? (Bible doesn’t say how far). I do indeed believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, and I don’t believe science has “proved” otherwise. Aside from why I believe evidence actually points to a young earth, no evidence can be conclusive about the past because we’re simply interpreting the things we see, not watching a recording of the past.
First of all, this is the end of the universe–can God not do what He wants? Second, the Bible makes no distintion between stars, planets, and other heavenly lights. Clearly much of Revelation is apocalyptic, prophetic, metaphoric language. Some of it may be literal (meteors…), but I don’t take any prophecy/eschatology as literal until fulfilled.
Very good. Indeed it is wrong to even use the label “Satan” which means adversary and was not given to the serpent until after the fall. So we typically give this angel the name Lucifer. I personally don’t believe he was acting outside his instructions when he challenged Eve concerning the command she was given. God’s command and warning were quite clear and so they had all they needed for doing the right thing.
Who is more likely to see the right answer? The fallible man reading words in an ancient language to a foreign culture who attributed them to the potter, or the fallible man who simply looks in the pot with lights and precise instruments to see every detail of what is in the pot.
No, it is not correct. The correct paraphrase would be: I believe the same special revelation but I don’t interpret this special revelation in a way to contradict general revelation.
No. I mean that scripture does not say what you claim. The text is only that God said it was good. The evidence does not have to speak for itself to contradict what you claim. Death and suffering is part of how our body works and without them we have disease. That cooperation works so well in the process of evolution is also known. These are the facts not interpretation. So yes I find meaning in the text which agrees with the facts. Why should anyone seek a meaning of the text with disagrees with these facts?
But that does not really address evolution and common ancestry. Even if we do not posses the details of biogenesis or primordial life, the situation is starkly different for the more recent geological and fossil record. There we have a solid understanding of what happened. It is no longer simplistic uniformitarianism vs catastrophism; rather, the record shows that life has dynamically evolved thoughout periods of stability punctuated with volcanic outgassing, swings in the Earth’s climate, and a decisive asteroid strike. A continuous record exists, to which ever more detail is uncovered.
Interesting that the Bible says that it is inspired (2 Timothy). It never says that it is inerrant. Note I am not saying that the Bible is errant. But when the Bible was written it was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit by writers unaware of the evidence from science we have today. This applies almost exclusively to Genesis.
VMI Man
Even with historical events, the writers memory or the cultural memories of historical events are not what are inspired, but rather the message the text is communicating regarding the plan and purpose of God.
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