You are all proving my point – that you are interpreting the very obvious and clear passage as non-history against the contextual evidence. However, every part of this quote refers back to what had actually done:
• Matthew 19:4-6 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning [actually] made them male and female [alluding to Gen. 1:26-27], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [quoting 2:24 as something that had actually happened]? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has [actually] joined together, let not man separate.”
My word “actually” is not at all changing the meaning but simply adding emphasis to the fact that God had actually and historically done these things. If He hadn’t done these things, the Pharisees could easily have contradicted Him:
• God didn’t actually do these. This is just a parable. Therefore, divorce does not violate the work of God in humankind.
You are denying the inseparable relationship between history and theology. Theology is established through God’s work historically. However, you separate it. To be consistent with your method, you separate the theology of the Cross from the history of the Cross – that Christ historically died on the Cross. Without the history, there can be no theology of the cross. Without the history of what God had done historically with Adam and Eve, there can be no theology of divorce.
I would like your explanation why you worry more about divorce than the Sabbath?
Exo 31:15 “Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the sabbath of rest, holy to the LORD: whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.”
Exo 35:2 “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the LORD: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death.”
If the Six Days of Genesis is literally true … how is it that you and all the denominations have become so casual about Saturday (or Sunday) … whichever is the day?
Do you think it would be in the interests of all the Faithful if this twice (in fact, thrice) repeated ruling were to be enforced?
How do you draw the line between the obvious and clear and the not obvious and not clear? In other words is Genesis 7:11 history or not?
Genesis 7:11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
Sure looks like it is clear and obvious that it is historical, but if it is where do you find the windows of heaven? It is clear to me that the context is history so the windows of heaven must exist right?
I hope you will not ignore my question (which follows):
Job 38:22-23 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble, for the day of battle and war? "
Daniel, how do you interpret this text?
Is it figurative? Or is it scientifically valid? Frankly, it looks like an error! There are no “storehouses” (aka “treasuries”) of hail or snow in the sky that God is reserving for times of trouble!
I forgot about the windows of Heaven. But I bet he and the YEC’s will simply say that this is figurative. I don’t think they can say the same about the “storehouses” of snow and hail … when the following verse says God has them reserved for the day they are needed!
Every time Jesus told a parable, his listeners could have made this kind of response. Yet that does not seem to have stopped him from telling parables. And it is interesting that none of his listeners, even the unfriendly ones, ever countered him in this way.
You are illogically importing modern Western notions of what constitutes a persuasive argument into ancient Jewish culture. What is your evidence that teaching and learning from storytelling was foreign to that culture? Quite the opposite, as we see not only from the Gospels but from other Jewish literature of the time period (midrash, etc).
Currently reading Peter Enns “The Bible Tells Me So” which makes that point. Not sure I accept all of Enns ideas but he makes a good case for reading in historical and cultural context and for the power of story in scripture. I enjoy his humor and writing style also, makes for an enjoyable read.
ditto to your response to that very book! I got a lot out of reading it despite not accepting every last part of his journey as prescriptive for mine (as he himself would also insist were he pressed, I’m sure.)