They were proper for then. Not for now. Which doesn’t invalidate the Incarnation. Far from it.
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Yes, that’s what I keep reminding myself. The hermeneutics of the NT has bothered me for years. But it was common at that time, and not just for Jesus or his followers.
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Your intellectual honesty does your faith credit.
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I had intended to follow up on questions of culture, but the more I’ve thought about it, I think bringing it up was a misstep on my part. It’s not really where I wanted to go.
You had (rhetorically) asked me a question that I think is more valuable (for any Christian) to work on, which I only answered indirectly. Ironically, MarkD asked me nearly the same question in a slightly different context recently.
I can give you a theological answer that you will reject outright. So, I’ll try another way around. I started to the other day.
It doesn’t take a lot of study to see that good people, honestly moral people sometimes/often do horribly, frightenly immoral things. Things that are utterly dehumanizing to themselves. You’re a much better historian than I am. You are thinking right now of many more examples than I will ever have time to learn.
I can feel confident today, while my life is easy and my needs are more than met, and I live in safety, that I’m a “good person” who will live as rightly as I am able. But, for example, I’m also raising a daughter I didn’t birth, whose birth mother left her in a box at the side of a road, when my daughter was only a few days old. There are all kinds of humanly justifiable reasons for doing that, and some of them utterly inhumane. What conditions would it take for me to make a similar decision. Or do something worse?
Additionally my reason for becoming her mother was entirely pragmatic. There was/is no pity involved. But no romance. No good deed. She is my daughter, and therefore, I love her mightily. Adoption was pragmatically the only way we would have the other child we wanted. And all of the decisions that went into the process of adoption were coldly rational.
I can’t quantify it. And I see I am going to fail at my plan to give an answer that works for you. I’m afraid I’m back to a theological answer after all. But to me it seems different, understanding that there is someone (Jesus) beyond myself who knows me completely, in spite of that loves me enough to die for me, lives for me and to whom I owe more than I can comprehend. I feel a great responsibiity that is grounded in love and gratitude. To me that makes a difference.
And that enormous yearning is focusing.
I can’t do “all natural.” But what I do isn’t romantic or doubt-free either. Ecclesiastes has always been the book I found a terrifying kinship with.
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One thing. If I found a baby in a box, they would be mine. That’s an instinct. There’s nothing pragmatic about it. I would be completely invested in them. Yet I watch dying babies in Tigray and they are not mine. A shutter comes down in me. That’s instinct too. There is nothing I can do about it, the babies or my reaction. If the report went on for more than a couple of minutes, I’d switch channels. Sometimes, rarely, only when alone, I choose to let the grief in and sob. Pragmatic catharsis I suspect.
We’re wired. And it’s OK. It’s morally neutral, meaningless, as morality itself is part of the expression of the wiring. There is no absolute morality, no higher morality. All morality is self serving right down to the selfish gene.
And yes, if I were a Guatemalan teenage girl staggering over the US-Mexico border and I gave birth on the road and there was a box handy, what else could I do? Instincts, morality come in Maslowian hierarchy.
Including the instinct for the sacred, for meaning. It’s only natural : )
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It seemeth to me, Martin, that you’re busy living it even while you deny its existence. Better than the opposite fault followed by the devout religious hoards choosing the broad path.
In fact … I might dare to say that the latest MacDonald thought posted over in that thread seems to apply especially to you here. Especially this bit (which perhaps not insignificantly - was the only bit Lewis actually included in his book for that day):
And when he can no longer feel the truth, he shall not therefore die. He lives because God is true; and he is able to know that he lives because he knows, having once understood the word, that God is truth. He believes in the God of former vision, lives by that word therefore, when all is dark and there is no vision.
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Hi Marshall,
Thanks for your post and finally was able to spend time reading and thinking about this.
For reference, in reading what you wrote, I picked up that your focus was on how to interpret (1) Paul’s understanding of “man/mankind/humanity/Adam/Eve” and (2) the his understanding of “ancestry” vs “identity”…mostly within the context of Romans. Just sharing this to let you know where my thinking was after reading your post.
I would first say that I agree with you and Biblcal scholars that the Hebrew term “adam” and Greek term “anthropos” can and are used for both “mankind/humanity” in general and “man” specifically as a male distinct from a female/woman. How we then interpret the meaning of these terms comes from the direct context as well as other revealed truths in scripture.
I wasn’t quite sure what you were saying in “ancestry language blurs into identification language”. I can only say I believe the scripture gives a clear understanding of both. Our ancestry (ie. origin) is from the first man & woman (Gen 1-5). And our identification, as Romans 5 states, is that in Adam, the result was “condemnation to all” and we were “made sinners”…and death is the proof of these…death reigns over all. But by the grace of God, in Christ, we can be “justified” and be “made righteous” to have eternal life with Jesus our Lord.
I appreciate again reading what you wrote and thinking through these important truths. Even if we are not in complete agreement on ancestry, I hope and believe we are looking to Christ and seeing Him as our one true Lord and Savior.
Thanks again and God bless!
Tom
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Busy living what while faultily denying it? MacDonald’s truth via Lewis? I feel the truth of social justice. Of love. That is a late and post-Christian truth for me. The truth of social justice is, like the truth of science, independent of God. It’s there in God for sure. The minority God of MacDonald, Gandhi, Dr. King. Francis, Bell, McLaren, Evans, Chalke, Tickell, Rohr. And of course the Cappadocian Fathers. And Paul. And Jesus Himself. It’s not there in BioLogos’ God, not matter how it tries to square the circle, have the cake of science and eat it too with conservative evangelicalism. So yes, I believe in the love of the former vision. But without evidence of divine intelligence I can’t not believe that it is entirely natural.
(And a pulse of fear ran through me as I wrote that Merv. As if I was denying Jesus. As if I was insulting Him. And because a voice within said ‘Liar!’. Because I doubt my doubt. How’s that for honesty mate? He’ll get over it : )
You answer your own questions, so far as I can see. Standing alone. And yet not alone.
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[Edited 11/8; 14:26 EST]
I’m content in my natural humanness – in what I have my existence. I’m content in the mediocrity of being all natural.
I don’t do all natural. I’m impatient, Martin. The yearning is no proof, but I’m inclined to look at the scanty evidence more hopefully than you are, and certainly more subjectively. You have Dawkin’s God Delusion and more to back you up. I can’t compete. On any level.
I understand that life in your cult encouraged things in you that you find abhorant now. They don’t define you. They also don’t define other people like me. For some of us cultics, our conclusions about the value of people, how to live right, and social justice, that are in accord with yours, come from our reading of the cultic texts we use. We have this in common at least, for different reasons.
Just heard the BBC U.S. Political Correspondant talking last night about upcoming elections. Chilling. I need to focus a good deal more on loving my enemies. If he’s right, I’ll be spending a lot more time directly engaged in social justice work of all kinds, as well. Thank you for helping bring this into better focus for me.
I have great respect for you, and I admire your brilliance and passion for what you are convinced of through decades of serious study. I take what you say under consideration, as I have been doing with other ideas for a very long time elsewheres. I have a long history of working with unsettling ideas and being unsettled and changed by them. Wrestling with them. But I’m not here for deconstuction or demolition.
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Thanks Christy…I’ll read thru these in the coming days…take care, Tom
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Hi there, I guess I am late to the party since I have not opened this forum for quite sometime, but here is my take.
You do understand that this struggle of yours is more about internal struggle within christianity (YEC vs OEC). I am also involved with a church that believe in YEC though it has not been studied critically, but just accepted by faith as most YEC churches are. As such, this struggle is between brothers and sisters, between christians, between believers with the same commitment to Jesus, so perhaps by keeping that in mind, we don’t want this struggle to create a division among us.
As for me, the more important question about this is whether embracing YEC or OEC can make me a better follower of Christ. There are perhaps certain situations where leaving YEC means that you are leaving the faith, then OEC provide a very very helpful insight that can sustain our faith in this case.
YEC : can God create this world in such a short time and make it look old? Certainly He can. With this in mind, I believe a lot of believers and pastors are quite ignorant of the main line science and are quite happy with their positions believing that it is what the bible teaches. My take is Let them be. if they are quite happy and content, then it is alright. believing in YEC or not does not make them closer to Christ. it is not primary in our faith to Christ.
But if some of YEC becomes critical and asking the questions of science and then we can lead them to the OEC that is in line with the accepted science of the day.
I know many here will agree with you. But I think it is a shame if that had the effect of dissuading Christian children from pursuing the studies necessary for careers on science if that is where their interests run. Also it does seem that the more education one acquires (especially STEM classes) the more likely their they are to deconstruct their faith. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way, but if it is, ignoring it won’t help.
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There are however the militant (and monetized) YECs that put up antagonistic barriers.
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it is a shame indeed. However, from my understanding about YEC and even talking with my pastor, no amount of data can persuade them to believe otherwise. Only when they start questioning their stand on YEC because of probably overwhelming data that comes across, then they can look for other answers provided by OEC.
These people are actually convinced that they are right. We can say that they are blind, but perhaps living in a matrix world (bubble as some mentioned it) prevents them to see the real world. Patience is perhaps a virtue needed to deal with them and a lot of prayer.
I once have a discussion with a YEC person, and then I did mention to him that his position as YEC or my position as OEC do not make us less a brother or a christian and it is not primary to our faith. I guess that statement give him the comfort knowing we can have different view and yet accept each other. Fortunately, that statement of mine apparently helped him to lower his self defence and encouraged him to explore outside the bible. He did turn to embrace OEC afterward after doing his own research.
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And in God’s grace, it didn’t lead him to reject his faith! I was a YEC in my youth because I had been taught that evolution was necessarily atheistic and I didn’t know there was anything else, but I had never liked the contrived explanations for how there was light before the creation of the sun. Having always been scientifically oriented, I then embraced OECism and ID before I learned about neutral drift and the neutral theory of evolution allowing me to understand and accept the biological science ca. only five or six years ago (I’m a septuagenarian in his early to mid geezerhood ; - ).
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I think this could be true in many scenarios. However, my experience is YECers not being content or happy. They’re the ones not letting me be :). There’s denial and the need for control. I would agree it’s not primary but I think truth is primary. Raising generation after generation to reject the truth of God’s creation is not a way forward for the gospel.
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They do need to protect their bubble. Protecting their bible has become a vast endeavour these days as the burden of proof for the YEC position is getting harder and harder to maintain. I am sure of one thing though. these YECs are sincere people, as sincere as you and me though they might be blinded from the truth of science. for that I apply that beautiful principle: In Essentials Unity, in Non-Essentials Libery, In All Things Charity.
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