The Various Meanings of Concordism

Is Type “C” basically the position of the Vatican?

“Type C concordism emphasizes that all truth is God’s truth and that it’s therefore healthy and good for science and Biblical theology to engage in active dialogue, seeking where possible to allow both disciplines to complement each other. This is in full light of the history of science and religion, marked as it is by complexity (Brooke, 1991), and the knowledge that concord is never a foregone conclusion.”

Sometimes it seems that the Bible and science are not in agreement. When this happens there are two ways to find harmony. They correspond to concordism A and B. One way is to change what science says. The other way is to change what the Bible says.

One or Type A is to adapt your science to fit the Bible. Denis gives the example inferring a young earth because of the days in Genesis. Other examples would be the “science” of flood geology or the denial or evolution. I would call this the YEC approach.

Two or Type B as Denis points out,“seeks to interpret texts in the light of modern science”. He gives examples of the gap and day age theories. As Ted Davis has written historically this type of concordism is associated with OEC. I think it goes beyond that. For example the Bible says there was flood. The context indicates it was world wide, but in the light of modern science we know that did not happen Therefore, we change the Bible to say it was a local flood. Coming up with an interpretation for the sake of harmony.

If we create an Adam that is not the person described in the Bible but who fits with modern science is this not concordism?

I think it is.

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@tomr

And I think Concordism is the logical approach to an impossible situation …

Type A makes science correspond to the Bible.

Type B makes the Bible correspond to science.

Type C reconciles science and theology. The best way to do this is through another basic discipline, philosophy. This also corresponds to the three basic aspects of Reality, the physical, rational, and the spiritual.

God made re4ality complex, rather than simple, even though traditional philosophy tries to make it Simple. Nonetheless neither monism, nor dualism works. We need a different point of view.

It is not an impossible situation if you can give up inerrancy and accept accommodation

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Roger, I agree with your observation. Type C does not seem to be about Biblical concordism but about a concord between science and theology. Type C may be a more useful enterprise as philosophy. However, I don’t think speculation about a possible Adam that fits evolution is helpful. It’s Type B not C.

I’m still not a fan. What is impossible about the situation? We really don’t need the Bible to accurately describe historical facts in every narrative.

@Christy

Well, now I’m puzzled. If I say “Concordism”, I’m implying that Concordism has to be applied to all texts and all narratives?

Here’s an example: I think the Adam and Eve story is a perfectly fine episode to which to apply Concordism …

But if someone were to ask me: So what is the Concordist interpretation of Eve and of the rib, I would say: that’s just material to make the story more interesting. I don’t see the need to take every element of a Biblical “story” and say it corresponds to something in reality.

@Christy, what distinctions do you make that help you conclude that you are not a Concordist? Maybe I fit in the same category ?

George, it does seem in actual practice that concordism is not applied to all texts. Your example of Eve’s rib is not concordist but if you agree with Denis Alexander that Adam and Eve were chosen out of a group of humans that would be concordist. Denis is not a strict concordist because he can accept evolution but because he needs a historical Adam thus he is open to concordist solutions. This is where definitions of concordism become unclear.

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@tomr,
I agree that people generally take an A or B approach to the “Adam problem,” which is unfortunate. It is my view that the story of Adam and Eve is primarily the story of the Fall from innocence, while evolution is interested in the evolution of the first genetic humans.

I expect that that the first genetic humans were not the ones who took part in the Fall. Therefore we ate mixing apples with oranges when we try to make them the first genetic humans.

However it is important to study our origins. There are two aspects of this found in Genesis. The first is the Image of God, which is found first in chapter 1, It seems to me that the genetic ability to think comes before the development this actual use of the mind.

I remember having to read an interesting book in grade school, Before Philosophy by Henri Frankfort, which tried explain the development of critical thinking. Looking back it seems strange to have children study a book about the origins of philosophy. Maybe that is why my thinking is distorted.

Genesis 2-3 conflates the origin of humans with their Fall from Innocence (not their fall from grace.) This is understandable, but causes much confusion. Philosophy can help straighten this out.

Grade school? I remember reading that book but in college. If people could get a handle how differently people in the ancient world thought from the way we think today, there would less problems with the Bible vs science.

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I’m guessing that what makes concordism so unpopular today is the notion that either science or the biblical text must be distorted in order to bring the two into harmony. I really don’t think either is necessary. What is necessary is for Christians to know more about cosmology. Most know very little. Regarding Scripture, we need to let go of many traditional interpretive cliches. For instance, what is so compelling about the idea that we can only see in Genesis what the ancients could have seen. The ancients saw biblical references to the sun as describing a sun that circled the earth, not because the text required this interpretation, but because that was how they believed the sun to behave. Their version of cosmology guided their interpretation of the text. Now that we have a different understanding of the sun and planets, we see references to the sun rising and setting as metaphorical. The old Ptolemaic view of the solar system need not inform our current interpretive efforts. Just because the ancients believed that the earth was covered by a physical dome that was solid in nature does not mean that we must interpret the raqia in the same manner. We are tethered by the translation of the word, beaten out, as we should be, but we needn’t see the result as a solid just because the ancients did. We should be guided by our own understanding of cosmology and our consideration of the surrounding text. These two things must have a greater influence on our interpretation than the interpretation understood by the original audience. The original audience does have its influence, but one must put it in perspective and not make it a closely limiting factor.

But don’t you think part of the interpretive process is understanding what it meant to the original audience, and then moving beyond that to try to understand what enduring truth the text is teaching? I don’t think it is so much that they had one lesson and we have another as we have to work a little harder to get the lesson, because our context and conceptual frameworks are different.

Yes, we do understand Scripture by discovering the message to the original audience and then determining how this applies to us in our own context. We do this fairly easily with Genesis 1. We see that God is saying that he himself created the heavens and the earth. We get this message pretty easily. What causes so much difficulty about Genesis 1 is that God does not just tell us that he made the heavens and the earth. If he had stopped there, we wouldn’t need to discuss it so much. But he goes on to tell us a bit of history; he tells us how he made the heavens and the earth. This is the part that becomes difficult. How can we believe that God created the universe if he says that he made light itself first, if he says that he separated water from water (where is this water?), if he made the plants before there was any sun, and particularly how could he have done these things in so little time? This makes no sense to us now that we know so much more about how the universe came into being. This is where the ancients differed from us in understanding.

God didn’t have to include the history of his actions in creating the earth; he could have left it alone. I think he included these details for our benefit. If we see that this history fits with what we now know, wouldn’t we have to accept that this piece of writing was produced by more than human effort?

Well, that is one of the arguments for concordism, but I don’t think it’s necessary to see “how it fits with what we know now.” I think a more honest look at the text asks what it was trying to teach the ancients. I don’t think it really was trying to teach them how the world was made. And if we can get inside the ancient perspective we can understand the real lessons there, which still apply today because they don’t have to do with the material origins of the universe.

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I think the only honest look at the text is to read what it says and go from there. The text is presented as history. If God was not telling us how the world was made, then what is the point of the 6 days? What is the point of the series of creations on those days? If this isn’t an explanation of how something was done, then language fails us. The real lesson of the passage is stated in the very first sentence: God created the heavens and the earth. That is the lesson for the ancients and for us. What follows, the description of the days, is God telling us how he did this totally incredible thing. He told us the details so that when we gained enough scientific sophistication to discover, from our point of view, the way the universe was made, we would find that he had told us already and thus be convinced that he tells us the truth. What we have recently discovered in cosmology so closely echoes Genesis 1 that it is the stuff of goose bumps; but no one will listen. Everyone is convinced that they have gotten the answer and don’t need to look further. All I am saying is we should not be so sure of our own ideas that we throw out a whole quadrant of the interpretive enterprise at a go.

@Marg,

If you are still around, or other readers if interested, please see this posting from another thread, on the parsing and analysis of what is and what is not Concordism.

Thanks!

https://discourse.biologos.org/t/what-does-original-sin-actually-mean-and-what-are-its-consequences/39404/127?u=gbrooks9

Yes, I’m still around, and still thinking. Still thinking concordism is the right way to understand Gen 1. Not Gen2-3, but Gen 1. Gen 2-3 is a whole 'nother ball of wax.

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