MattC, why does it matter whether some interpretation is “normal” or not? There is no reason to assume that a “normal” (or most popular) interpretation is a valid one. Nicodemus assumed the “normal” interpretation when he heard Jesus say that “You must be born again.” Nicodemus expressed his surprise at a “natural” interpretation of Jesus statement when he went to Jesus one night and asked, “Can a man enter into his mother’s womb a second time and be born again?” Yet, Jesus told Nicodemus that his “natural” understanding of the term was wrong.
This “normal interpretation” and “natural reading of the text” sounds like just another version of “the child test” that I’ve heard people cite for as long as I can remember.
I won’t attempt to speak for my colleague but I want to ask you a related question. I once heard a biology professor say in her lecture to Biology 101 students, “For those of us of the female gender, when the stork delivered us to our parents we already had in our bodies a lifetime supply of eggs.” Tell me, MattC, because that biology professor mentioned a stork delivering babies to parents, do you think that that means that she affirmed a belief in storks as where babies come from? Or was she simply using a standard linguistic convention in the English language for referring to the day of a person’s birth?
Likewise, someone in first century Palestine could have referred to “the six days of creation” as a common convention to speak of all of God’s providence in bringing about the world they observed around them. (Whether or not the average person in Jesus’ day thought that the creation of the world required six solar days is irrelevant to what God actually did.) I have used the very same choice of words to refer to the plan of God in creating the universe—even though I’m well aware of the billions of years of earth’s history which God in his wisdom ordained and gave testimony to us through the evidence he placed all around us. Figurative language does not undermine the literal realities.
Genesis describes Noah’s flood as an inundation of the ERETZ. The fact that the ancients had limited understanding of the full nature and scope of the ERETZ doesn’t change the fact that we see zero evidence of a planet-wide flood. (Such a recent inundation of the entire planet so very recently as Young Earth Creationists claim should have left obvious evidence virtually everywhere we look. Instead there is zero evidence of a global flood. As a former YEC was once invested heavily in the “creation science” movement, I can assure you that I looked most aggressively for that evidence!) Jesus made no effort to describe the geographic extent of the flood. Indeed, when Jesus mentioned Noah, he worked from within the understanding of his audience. My question for you, MattC, is whether you think that Jesus should be denied the same facility of language that the biology professor is allowed to use. I think most of us grant the Lord Jesus the same leeway in his use of human language that we would grant a biology professor.
Jesus also said that the mustard seed was the smallest of all seeds. As a “literal” statement of botanical description, Jesus’ declaration would be considered a falsehood. Yet within the conventions of human language, Jesus used a linguistic expression which was well understood at the time. Jesus wasn’t giving a botany lecture at a university. He was making a theological point: a little bit of faith can have huge and powerful implications. Is that not obvious?
These are just a few examples of how those who demand literal interpretation create for themselves contradictions and problems within the Biblical text which otherwise would never be problematic—even under a “natural reading” of the text! Indeed, by insisting upon interpretations that would force Genesis 1 to contradict itself, they dishonor the text.
Really? That is news to me! After a lifetime studying the Greek texts of the New Testament, I’ve yet to find any evidence of Jesus “believing” that Genesis 1 demanded some sort of “short” duration. Again you confuse tradition over what the Biblical text actually states.
Indeed, that is the power which cherished traditions can hold over us. Our cognitive dissonance can be so overwhelming that we aren’t even conscious of it. We are reminded of that danger whenever what we think is “obvious” in the text, while to so many of our brethren within the Biblical studies academy, it is not so obvious at all. (If something were truly “obvious”, those with equal reverence for the value of the Biblical text would all agree on the interpretation of a given passage.)
Is it not obvious? The creation hymn we call Genesis 1—which was probably a very old oral tradition at the time it was put into writing as part of the Torah—is based upon a SEVEN YOM creation poem outline. So it is entirely appropriate that when God enacted a command of sabbath-keeping as part of the Sinai Covenant, he cited the special meaning of YOM SEVEN using a familiar tradition which everyone among the children of Israel would have understood. You appear to be saying that a YOM #7 sabbath day could not have been mnemonically-based upon the seven YOM of the Genesis 1 oral tradition unless seven solar days were involved in both. What is your basis for that? What “rule” of logic requires it? Why can SEVEN only be significant if linked to a “solar day” and not just the Hebrew YOM of Genesis 1? MattC, once again you are selectively applying your sense of “literalism” wherever it suits your purpose, even while ignoring such literalism wherever it doesn’t.
The Bible also speaks of the four corners of the earth. Do you assume that this is a “literal” description of the earth? And when you hear a sailor speak of his lifetime of experiences on “the seven seas”, do you assume that there are exactly seven separate seas of the world instead of one huge ocean which human language tends to classify and divide using very general terms of location?
You seem to be holding tenaciously to “solar days” in Genesis 1 as if everything depends upon them. MattC, can you please explain to us how there can be three solar days, each with an allegedly literal evening and literal morning, when you believe that no sun existed until “solar day #4”? Do you not see that as the enormous self-contradiction it is? Please explain to me how three solar days can exist without a sun?
By the way, within a poetic hymn, such obvious contradictions aren’t contradictory at all. But the moment you claim that Genesis 1 must be a prose historical narrative of seven solar days, the “chronological account” immediately falls apart from its own internal contradictions.
MattC, does it bother you at all that a 6,000 years ago, six 24-hour solar day creation based upon a “literal interpretation” of Genesis 1 totally contradicts the testimony to billions of earth history which God has given us in the creation itself? If God is truly the author of both the Bible and the Creation, shouldn’t we expect BOTH of God’s great works of authorship to be in agreement about our history? I certainly expect God’s two great books to tell a consistent story. So whenever it appears to me that the two are in contradiction, I generally assume that my interpretation of the evidence from one or the other or both is flawed. I have great confidence in the truths of the scriptures but have limits to my confidence in my ability to interpret them properly. And a major reason for that is that the longer I live and the more I learn about the original languages of the Bible (and many other fields of scholarship), the more I find my Biblical hermeneutics maturing and thereby changing from what it once was.
MattC, your comments bring back a lot of my memories of long ago. When I was drawn into the “creation science” movement with the publication of THE GENESIS FLOOD (1962, Henry Morris & John Whitcomb Jr.), after John Whitcomb had preached a preview at my church the year before, it blended perfectly into the Young Earth Creationism traditions of my peer group and family background. At the time there was limited breadth to my knowledge of science and Classical Hebrew—and more importantly, my grasp of historical and comparative linguistics—so I internalized six-solar-day creationism and “flood geology” uncritically and without hesitation. Why? I assumed that (1) those whose theology and personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ was similar to my own deserved my total trust, and that (2) God wouldn’t allow sincere, prayerful disciples of Jesus Christ to be wrong about such an important topic. (3) I also assumed that such apparently godly people had done their due diligence in investigating both the exegetical and scientific evidence, and surely I should trust born-again, Bible-believing Christians for my understanding of the earth’s history. After all, they told me that all of the evil atheists of the liberal, worldly universities taught the Theory of Evolution and its billions of years for the sole purpose of destroying students’ faith in God! So, it was obvious to me which side of the culture world deserved my allegiance.
Sadly, all of those presumptions on my part were wrong. They had no basis in the scriptures, though the cherished traditions of my church had convinced me that these were absolute truths! Not until I started digging deeper into the scriptural and scientific evidence for myself did I begin to realize that my “spiritual heroes” had not carefully done their research. I discovered that they had cherry-picked their so-called evidence and had so often deceptively (and dishonestly?) quote-mined their sources.
Worse yet, when someone during the audience Q&A would expose blatant errors in my colleagues’ books and conference presentations, these “creation science” experts would promise to correct them and more carefully explain them in the next edition of their books—yet that rarely happened. Even more worse yet, the following weekend at the very next “Creation Weekend” Bible conference, the same speaker would repeat the same misinformation unchanged, as if they had somehow forgotten their promise to be more truthful. Yet, when I would confront them privately, I was given the worldly excuses of compromise and self-justification: “Do you think the atheist evolutionists care about getting their facts perfectly right? Why aren’t you complaining about them?” I got angry replies when I answered those questions with “Atheists don’t reflect my position, nor do they represent Jesus Christ and the Gospel as we do. Shouldn’t the highest standards of truth-telling start with us? Doesn’t the Lord call us to truth?”
Needless to say, my questioning of the authority of the self-appointed leaders of the creation science movement gradually brought me into more and more conflict as I began to see these non-profit and yet commercial enterprises gradually evolving into what would became the lucrative origins industry we observe today.
Why do I mention these asides? Many of the arguments you are presenting, MattC, have been made popular by the enterpreneurs of the origins ministry industry. Their poorly constructed arguments about the scriptural and scientific evidence today have changed very little from those used a half century ago. So many Christians repeat them out of sheer familiarity and tradition with little thought to the fact that they make no more sense today than they did in 1962. (Insisting upon three solar days of evenings and mornings before the sun was created on Day #4 destroys a rigidly literal interpretation of Genesis 1 without any help from Hebrew exegesis or modern science! I’m absolutely amazed that anyone still uses the six-24-hour solar-days “plain meaning” argument.) This does not escape the notice of non-Christians as they make natural assumptions about the credibility of the Bible, and so general receptivity to the Gospel message itself suffers accordingly. That’s why these topics are not just a minor matter of disagreement among believers. The evidence-denialism (both of the scripture evidence and the scientific evidence) of Young Earth Creationism is doing incredibly damage to the Great Commission. Claims of a six solar day creation 6,000 years ago are not just absurd on the basis of all available scriptural and scientific evidence. They destructively distract from the salvation teachings of Jesus Christ.