Science and scripture generally answer different questions about God’s creation. But there is sometimes overlap between the two though. People–even us Christians on this forum–often question Christian doctrine and belief in light of science. It’s naive to suggest otherwise. Reality is a bit messier than the neat categories and models we put things into. Just as we can misunderstand scripture, people can over-extend what a scientific theory teaches. So just as we can confuse “our interpretation of scrupoture” with “what God says” people can confuse their interpretation of reality with “what science says.”
These two books do not contradict. They cannot contradict because they were never meant to compete. They were meant to complete each other.
Details in scripture can certainly contradict. Parts of the Bible refer to the four corners of the earth (Is. 11:12), think thoughts come from our kidneys (Psalm 16:7), believe there is a solid firmament in the sky (Gen 1:6, Job 37:18), proclaim the earth is immutable and does not move (1 Chron 16:30, Ps 93:1, 96:10, 104:5; Is 45:8), that the earth is flat (Mt 4:8, Dan 4:10-11), stars are small and close enough to the earth they can fall from the sky and land on it (Rev 6:13-16, 8:10; Mt 2:10, 24:29; Dan 8:10). We could add many more examples to this list. I think what you mean to say is:
“What I think God is trying to teach–sometimes through material falsehood and the mistaken beliefs of ancient authors–when properly interpreted, cannot contradict accurate scientific knowledge.”
But just as the Bible is not a science manual, I would say it’s not a modern historical textbook, a philosophy textbook or systematic theology textbook.I am not sure why science is so special? If God doesn’t weed out mistaken scientific knowledge, do we need to assume he would weed out mistaken theology, philosophy or history? “Science” is just a name for how we classify a certain type of knowledge that is obtained in a specific way.
The best way to understand Genesis 1 today is probably in how it rearranges Mesopotamian furniture to teach us theology. We could say this genre consideration dictates that any substantial errors in the text should be with the things it intends to teach through its material content and belief. But for all I know, the original author may have actually thought the world was created this way. That scripture corrects and rearranges Mesopotamian furniture does not exclude this view. When ancient authors treated scripture in an allegorical fashion, more times than not they accepted its literal dimension as well. The only reason I have to think the author did not believe he was writing a literal description of creation is because I think God inspired it and that such a description is wrong. We like to imagine these ancient authors were modern literary critics and could never believe these things.
I just recently made a new thread on this here.
I don’t see many challenges. Just a few details to hammer out. I think God took two humans and gave them rational souls. Given I am not an atheist, or swayed by philosophical naturalism, I don’t think a full human is fully reducible to material processes. What makes a human distinct is our intellectual and spiritual capacity. So I don think God made two humans de novo with the appearance of age. I find Genesis 1-11 to be largely mythological.
But I do accept the universal nature of the flood. Since only the genealogical ancestors of Adam and Eve had souls, I can see the flood wiping out all humans except Noah and company. Other “humans” spread around the world were biological animals lacking the rational soul.
As for the “Nephilim:”
Either its mythological fiction or the Sethite interpretation should be adopted.
Bergsma and Pitre: “The sons of Seth interpretation, adopted here, is the common view of the Catholic tradition. Scripture and ancient Near Eastern literature employ “son” as a covenant category (Ps 2:7; 89:26-28; Ex 4:22). In the narrative of Genesis, the “sons of God” are Sethites, heirs of the covenant of adoptive divine sonship from Adam. The “daughters of men” would be the women descended from Cain, the line that has turned its back on the presence of God (Gen 4:16).
From a literary perspective, the Sethite interpretation is supported by the fact that the Pentateuch repeatedly depicts intermarriage between men of the covenant line and women from other peoples who do not worship the Lord as something to be avoided (e.g., Gen 16, 24, 26:34-35; 28:6-9; Num 25:1-5, etc.). It also makes much more sense of the Flood that follows: as a result of intermarriage, the covenant people become so corrupted that all the world is violent like Cain’s descendants, with the sole exception of Noah and “his family, the righteous “remnant” of the line of Seth.”
Overall I find you work positive and helpful to Christians struggling to make sense of scripture and science.
Vinnie