Thinking about staging a public debate with YECs:Any suggestions?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Yes. I shouldn’t think the Serpent in the Garden was actually the Easter Bunny in disguise as a talking, snake. But again, neither was it Satan, a being just not on Jewish radar when originally written. One can surmise God put the words on the authors mind knowing they would make full sense later I guess. I think the trouble is we have this idea of a static model of scripture with one meaning instead of a dynamic one. Maybe polyvalence is the key and we shouldn’t always force a univocal message. I mean Adam and Eve could have different meaning for:

—A retelling and counter to ANE mythology to someone living in a pagan environment thousands of years ago.
—During the Exile Israel is Adam and Eve, kicked out of the garden/promised land for disobeying God
—for many Christian’s it teaches that we are all sinners, original sin and something is broken about the world.
—for some literal history in how we broke the world.
—for some it’s the timeless truth that sin alienates us from God

Why do we need one meaning? Is there one correct meaning or can the whole church throughout its history wrestle with the narrative and look at our own behavior?

The Bible should make sense to ancient audiences but it needs to be applicable to us today and people throughout history or who cares? I think our whole modern approach to the Bible has pros and cons. The historical critical method is great, but limiting inspired scripture to hermeneutical tools and the historians toolbox seems more appropriate for non-sacred texts or works of pure non-fiction. It’s also probably about control (one correct orthodox view).

The way the NT treats the OT and they way traditions develop, it’s hard to imagine this is not what God wanted.

I have no certainty on the Jacob story and what it meant x thousands of years ago. Was it primitive and an adapted story of an ancient river wright battle? I just know that it describe my relationship with Scripture and doctrinal truth. I wrestle with it constantly. This forces me to give more effort and dig and dig.

In that case I would push back and ask why God was so deceptive in writing Scripture.

I agree with you there has to be limits but what you are describing is exactly what some early Christians did in some cases. I’d say we need to be willing to allow some pliability and creativity in interpreting a Biblical story today. We also have all of scripture vs just the one book we are reading.

The OT can point to Jesus in a few spots. But that doesn’t mean the hundred spots the NT records as pointing to Jesus did do so. They changed the original meanings of the texts and applied sacred scripture to Jesus. The way the NT uses the OT is highly illuminating.

But for me the point is, scripture can take on double meanings. A meaning for its intended audience and a meaning later on in the life of the Church.

Not to mention we are putting g the interpretation of scripture on man. When reading it, if the Hoky Spirit wants me to get a different message than you or emphasizes something different to move me in a needed direction… well, is that not possible? Surely getting the Bible right isn’t just about the historian and his toolbox?

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Is that some new movement I’d never heard of before now? Where can I sign up … I’m curious!
:grin:

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I agree. I think it would be pretty hard to make the case that authors of the original covenants and prophecies saw in any more detail than they were given exactly what all was going to be unfolding in the person of Christ as he walked the dusty streets of Palestine; the amazing amount of details from some like Isaiah notwithstanding. Had they foreseen Christ exactly then their readers would have been able to much sooner recognize Christ and what he was about. They obviously didn’t - even as Christ himself labored so hard to tell them in person. So, almost certainly, we now, following the lead of Christ and the apostles, import much more meaning to those earlier prophecies than the original authors of those words could have had available to themselves.

So the question for me is: Was that a one-off? The one important time that somebody (Jesus himself) was allowed to appropriate and expand on (and beyond) original authorial intent? Or was it an example we’re allowed or even expected to follow? [I know - biblicists will just insist that Jesus/God was the only author of it all along anyway, so the intent was always fully there from the beginning, but I gather we’re all in agreement that God actually used real human authorship.]

I think your invocation of the Holy Spirit is important in this - if scriptures really were as plain as some inerrantists wish everyone to think, then what would we need the Holy Spirit for? Presumably the Spirit is pretty important for us - Christ certainly thought so.

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44

You put your right foot in….

That’s what it’s all about.

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45

The second entry (starting at 06:18) in this podcast video from Keith Foskey (the same person made the video that was put in Humor in Science and Theology about “If they were churches”) is about the exact conflation in question (of the Holy Spirit with the Hokey Pokey).

And before such gets started, this is not the thread to start debating whether Reformed Baptists (like the two individuals in the podcast) have good theology.

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46

For a church near a college campus that sort of presentation – with an open invitation to students – could be hugely beneficial. I managed some of that one-on-one, but thinking back I should have gone to InterVarsity or another campus ministry to propose a seminar outlining both the above as well as explaining that and why our faith doesn’t rest on an inerrant Bible, it rests on an inerrant Savior.

I have on occasion compared it to doing a jigsaw puzzle and starting in the middle, where much of the puzzle is broad swaths of continuous colors (so only shape gives a clue as to whether two pieces will match), plus it isn’t known how big the puzzle is, and many of the pieces aren’t immediately available but are hidden somewhere around the house: scientists build on the structure that has been assembled so far, occasionally finds that part of it doesn’t actually fit, frequently operates without even knowing if the next piece is even something that is known – and every now and then someone comes along and mixes up all the pieces again.

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47

Yep. I listened to an impressive lecture a while back where a cosmologist was arguing that the speed of light being an absolute limit may not be true, depending on how many other dimensions there are than the common four and how they connect. An inevitable question got asked during Q&A: does this mean there could be hyperspace that could be used to effectively avoid the c-limit? The answer was that there could be hyperspace, “hypospace”, “prospace” or even “kataspace” – space that is above, below, ‘ahead of’ (temporally?), or alongside our four dimensions. She made the point that Einstein didn’t show that Newton was wrong, he just showed that Newton’s laws are special cases of “greater” laws, and who knows if someone will come along and show that Einstein’s “laws” are just special cases of other laws.

It struck me not so much as a presentation proposing any actual alternative but more an exercise in saying, “Don’t assume we know it all”.

I remember one day in grad school when I got accused of being a liberal. I responded with, “Only in my giving”.

The bizarre thing is that literalism is both a reaction to modernity and a result of it: the idea that for something to be true it has to be 100% scientifically and historically correct comes from scientific materialism.

One of my philosophy profs did. He was role-playing being Aristotle, answering questions as he thought Aristotle would, and right at the start of a reply to one question he stopped (after like three words) and said, “Wait, what?” What my fellow student’s insight was I don’t recall, just the moment when it became obvious that the professor was (at least momentarily) stymied.

Then there was the physics prof who prowled the labs hoping to catch a student with a new insight!

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48

I came across a superb lecture on this topic that went through how second Temple Judaism handled the scriptures and showed why they did what they did and then that the Apostles aren’t free-wheeling things, they’re solidly in that tradition. I’m trying to recall who it was (without luck except that it wasn’t Michael Heiser or Tim Mackie).
That said–

It’s the starting point. The text may often mean more than what the author had in mind, but it never means less than that.

There was a powerful argument made by a visiting professor in grad school that the whole business of speaking about a “theology of Paul”, a “theology of Jesus”, “theology of John”, etc. does a thorough disservice to all of them because none of them looked at the existing scriptures that way. He totally shredded the arguments of the presenter that chopped the New Testament into differing theologies.

There were rabbis before Christ who viewed it as Messianic, they just got consigned to the trash heap as Judaism reacted to the challenge of/from Christianity by silencing views that favored Christian teachings.

Because that tells us the message for the original audience.

I so wish I could remember (or find) sources for things!

I once read a debate between two rabbis over who the Serpent was. One presented the interesting view that the identity didn’t matter in the original story, only what was done, and that later we get clues that allow us to say, “Oh, that’s who it must have been”.

This line got me:

One of the most widespread misconceptions is that there is a “biblical” view of just about everything, from dating and wealth management to social media and diet; from economics and politics . . . .

I once derailed an argument between two people about the Cleansing of the Temple incident, one arguing it showed Jesus as right-authoritarian and the other that it shows Him as left-activist: I told them they were both wrong, that it clearly shows that Jesus was a libertarian because He was chasing squatters out of His Dad’s residence.

That’s a great analogy; it reminds me of the fact that communists prior to the Russian Revolution used scripture to launch into communist “lessons” (as portrayed, BTW, in the musical Fiddler on the Roof).

I see what you did there! Nice.

Not just that – with the Incarnation, Jesus was Israel, something that became steadily more evident as things marched towards the Cross. Just as “ha-adam” was humanity, so “ha-meshiach” was Israel (and humanity, as Paul expounds).

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Here are two passages, one from one of the greatest evangelical Christians of the last century, the other from one of the greatest Fathers of the early church, that I feel should have an airing in this Biologos debate:

  1. “I don’t think that there’s any conflict at all between science today and the Scriptures. I think we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we’ve tried to make the Scriptures say things that they weren’t meant to say, and I think we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course, I accept the Creation story. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man… whichever way God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man’s relationship to God.”
    (Billy Graham in “Doubt and Certainties” 1964)

  2. “In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture. … Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although “they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.” (1 Tm 1, 7)”
    (St Augustine in “The Literal Meaning of Genesis”, AD 415)

Just as Billy Graham was aware of the creationist/literalist vs allegorical interpretation of Genesis, so too was Augustine aware of a similar debate in his time, with St. Basil the Great for example arguing for a literalist approach and Oregon of Alexandria preferring an allegorical one. Augustine himself adopted a different view. The Catholic Faith and Reason website explains it as follows:

“As for the two creation accounts in Gen. 1-2, he [Augustine] … said they were two moments or aspects of God’s creative action. He took the position that God created all things simultaneously, but that in this original creative act living beings had not yet been made independent substances but only existed potentially in the causales [causal] or seminales rationes [seminal types of] which God had placed in the world. From the outset then, the created world was equipped, in the form of predispositions, with everything that belongs to it. In accordance with the rationes seminales which at the very first moment had been placed in the world like seeds, the created world developed its potentialities at the proper times and in suitable places in accordance with the divine providence. Thus envisaged, the creation, which was accomplished once for all, was in one sense complete, in another incomplete. As a result it could be said, on the one hand that God rested on the seventh day in as much as he did not create any more kinds of creatures that were not contained actually or potentially in the original creative act. On the other hand, it was possible to speak of God’s further action inasmuch as he governed the created world and intervened when and as he wished, as, for example, in the formation of Adam and Eve.”

It seems to me that God endowed creation at its first moment (Big Bang) with a material reality embracing a vast array of potential developments, governed by the laws and constants which underpin the Anthropic principle – not at all a bad description of evolution in the realms of both physics and biology. Were Augustine alive today, this is surely how he would reinterpret his choice of the word “predispositions” and find himself in wholehearted agreement with Billy Graham.

To me, the YEC community comes firmly under Augustine’s castigation of ignorant Christians preferring to cling to a literalist interpretation of Genesis for psychological reasons, fearful that any weakening of this approach to biblical exegesis could undermine their whole faith. His words echo the urgent note of caution expressed in 2 Peter 3:16: “This is what he [Paul] says in all his letters when he writes on the subject [ the Day of the Lord’s Coming]. There are some difficult things in his letters which ignorant and unstable people explain falsely, as they do with other passages of the Scriptures. So they bring about their own destruction.” (Good News)

I end with this thought. The ancient near east cosmology pictured a flat earth below a vast dome (“the vault or firmament of heaven”) into which were set the sun and moon and stars and which divided the “waters above” and the “waters below”. These cultural elements are plainly echoed in Gen. 1 and appear again in Gen 7’s description of the flood when the ocean below erupted and the floodgates in the dome were opened to permit the waters above to rain down. No one with a modern education can possibly say that this was literally how things were.

So, Billy Graham’s understanding that the Bible is not a book of science but one of redemption is the way to preserve its sacred status and defend it against the scorn poured upon it by so-called new atheists like Prof. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and their cohorts of followers. I like to think of the language and concepts and imagery embodied in scripture as the imperfect and far from inerrant cultural envelope used by our wise and gracious God to send his core message of salvation to mankind.

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50

Thanks for those quotes!

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That’s one Christian view. But there’s also a problem here with the word “real”: to a modern person, “real” means it actually happened as reported, but to an ancient near eastern person “real” meant it came from someone with the authority to present such lessons; whether it “actually happened” was not a criterion.

It also rests on what one means by “original”: the term can just mean “the first sin”, or it can mean “the sin of origin”; the first leaves us facing the practical result(s) of that first sin but without guilt, the second tends to pronounce guilt on us all – a line from a hymn by Martin Luther presents that (very Augustinian) view:

In Adam we have all been one, one huge rebellious man.

The sad thing is that apart from that opening line the hymn is fantastic theology.

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Graham’s understanding should be reinforced by explaining that we should let the Bible be what it is instead of trying to force it to speak twenty-first century English. Once it’s recognized as ancient near eastern literature it becomes more vibrant and alive.

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omg what a load of tripe. YEC don’t cling to their literalist religious beliefs any more or any less than you do yours. We can throw the exact same opposing argument at you…you have no choice but to agree with evolution because secular scientist (which are the vast majority of all scientists in the world today) say the earth is 4.54 billion years old. You are simply placing your eggs in the statistics basket…nothing more nothing less. You only take interest in evidence that supports your world view in the same manner i do mine. The difference is, i place my faith in the authenticity of the Bible narrative as written (not as interpreted according to secularism and the statistics)

YEC follow the creationist view because it is the only internally consistent biblical view one can have.
None of the other versions maintain any biblical consistency. They are an anemic mess to be honest. none of them would buy a house under such circumstances, and yet they place their salvation squarely in the entry-way of such stupidity.

i couldn’t care less if individuals quoted King Charles himself reciting evolutionary views…i don’t give a rats about it quite frankly because i know that from reading via the normal use of language, its plainly obvious what the Biblical position is regarding genealogy and timelines. The beauty of scripture is that is doesnt take a rocket scientist to correctly understand the internal biblical theology…more often than not, they are the ones who screw it up actually (so there’s that).

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In my book, “omg” is a profanity – hardly a suitable way to begin your response, Adam.

You claim that in saying that YECers cling to a literalist interpretation I am in the same boat as you because I must be clinging to my belief in science. Not at all. I would not fret if new evidence showed the theories of biological evolution and big bang to be false, but I know from my researches that the vast majority of scientists accept those theories and cannot envisage any scenario that would falsify them. For example, 98% of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science reject YEC opposition to them for biblical rather than scientific reasons.

What I will not do is adopt as a matter of fundamental dogma a position that enslaves science to statements in Genesis which plainly reflect an ANE cosmology that modern science long ago consigned to the dustbin and which are entirely incidental to the main message that the Genesis author was inspired to convey, viz. that God created and governs all things. As the past 50 years prove, making controversial literalist dogma your starting point and endeavouring thereafter to squeeze incompatible scientific evidence into this literalist mould has put YEC on a certain collision course with modern science.

You don’t seem to understand that scientists must proceed by investigating empirical evidence freely with open minds as to where it will lead, forming and testing hypotheses as to how the data arose irrespective of their religious or philosophical positions. Your paranoid reaction is to blame scientists for an imaginary hostility to religion in general and the Bible in particular. However, here again you are so wrong. A Pew Research survey in 2009 found that 51% of scientists believed in God (33%) or a higher spiritual power (18%) whereas only 41% were either atheist or agnostic. Interestingly, younger scientists surveyed were even more open to religious ideas, with 66% believing in God or a higher power.

As a Christian, I know that all truth originates in God’s creative plan, so I know that science will never threaten the truths of redemption in the Bible, as Billy Graham proclaimed. Like Graham, my interpretation of the Bible is far from shambolic and follows the views of most modern biblical scholars in treating Genesis as a document written in its final form in the 5th century BC with the Gen. 1-11 preamble added as late as the 3rd century BC as a pre-historical account of creation and early human development to counter its contemporary pagan equivalents.

What however is truly shambolic is the history of the extraordinary contortions YEC apologists have embraced to escape the massive weight of scientific evidence – see The Confessions of a Disappointed Young-Earther (peacefulscience.org). One position after another, notably including flood geology, have been launched with great fanfares only to be quietly abandoned as their inner contradictions have been exposed. Out of this pseudo-scientific wreckage, there is really only one position that YEC can now cling to, viz. that God created a mature universe 10,000 years ago and miraculously fixed every empirical evidence to make it resemble a very, very old universe. Of course, such a position is as unbiblical as it is scientifically unfalsifiable and as such is just fideism and has nothing to do with science. If you prefer to believe that the God of Truth has perpetrated this most colossal deception on mankind rather than sacrifice your literalism, then that is up to you. But please don’t pretend that you are on the side of the angels.

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Oh, ignorance! YEC doesn’t maintain any biblical consistency either, it picks and chooses when to read literally and when not. The only biblical consistency that can be achieved comes from reading the text as what it was to the original audience, which YEC refuses to do.

This is equivalent to saying, “I consider myself right without having to actually study how ancient literature was written or care at all about the culture it was written in; I just know I’m right”.
Unless you’re fluent in ancient Hebrew and in Koine Greek, the odds of you being able to do “reading via the normal use of language” are less than zero.

As do thousands of Old Testament scholars; many would say that YEC “is not even wrong” because it refuses to address the scriptures as they are, as ancient literature rather than a friend’s grandfather’s journal of things he witnessed.

As well as with actual biblical scholarship. As one highly respected scholar put it recently when asked about a literal view of the passage they were discussing, “It makes the text meaningless”, adding “no one back then would have bothered writing it down if that’s all it was”.

I rediscover that over and over with passages in various books, not just Genesis: YEC ignorantly strips away the actual message of the text and reduces it to the equivalent of a laundry list. Actual Old Testament scholars could teach for dozens of hours about Genesis 1 (and have done so) because they respect its origins and see in it most of the things that the original audience would have; a literalist might get to half an hour (I once listened to a series of lectures about I Samuel 1 & 2 that took three hours to finish the first chapter).

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The Earth isn’t 4.54 billion years old because scientists say so. It’s the ratio of isotopes in the rocks that points to that age. It is facts that point to an old Earth.

What evidence are we ignoring?

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That limits Scripture. If the only meaning is the one that fits at the time of writing then Scripture is now 2000 years out of date. Scripture has to be more than academic study. Context is important, but it does not necessarily seal the deal.

Richard

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Out of curiosity, what types of truths ought we be picking up from Scripture? It seems like the only things we could get that aren’t context specific would be like moral truths, and even some of those are context specific. Should we assume scientific or historical accuracy before we understand the context of the passage?

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I am not sure that I am the right person to answer this, with the reputation I have about following Scripture.

As I see it Scripture’s main task is to introduce God and show us how He has revealed himself over history and with that come how people have reacted or understood these revelations. Clearly culture and knowledge will affect how God is perceived.

Scripture can only reveal what the writers knew or understood. Cosmology and science knowledge has changed considerably. Things that might have seemd miraculous could be possibly explained, and methodology or explanations of actions might be seen differently.
It always amazes me that people can still read the garden of Eden as based on some sort of reality. When was the last time you heard a serpent speak? Or came across a tree with magical life giving (knowledge giving) properties? A worldwide flood would seem to be a physical impossibility from what we see of the water table now, but who knows? In theory God is not restricted to our reality or science.

What you take from scripture will be dependent on your world view, your religious view, and to a greater or lesser extent your life experiences.
IMHO
What it important is that you come to your own conclusions rather tha obey or accept meekly some authority or “Christian” doctrine.

Richard

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Scripture itself demonstrates that this is not accurate when the prophets take something from the Torah and spin a new lesson out of it. They are always faithful to the original meaning but to a large degree are saying, “Yet you missed the point!”

It’s something we rules-oriented Westerners don’t really get: many “commandments” were not issued as saying, “This is the (only) correct way to do something” but were intended for the people to see the underlying principle and apply it elsewhere. Jesus provides a superb example of this with the Parable of the Good Samaritan (which might more accurately be called the Parable of the Good Neighbor): He takes the instruction to love one’s neighbor and from one perspective says “When in doubt, anyone you encounter is your neighbor!” while from another He is saying, “Be the kind of neighbor you’d like others to be, and you’re covered”.
He’s actually doing a bit of the same with His vineyard parables, drawing on the same imagery as used by the prophets but expanding on it. Those parables don’t really say anything new, they just expand on something that an astute thinker should have figured out in the first place.

But it mustn’t be less, else you’re just making up your own material and justifying it with scripture.

No, but it provides the starting point – and repeatedly, that starting point goes much farther than most of us would have gotten without it. There is SO much we miss because we don’t have the cultural background the original audiences had; they understood references we have to study hard to even find, let alone grasp the point of.

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