Of course, we cannot equal literacy with knowledge, You can be quite literate yet your understanding of whatever it is you are addressing is incomplete or misinformed. I have not to my knowledge heard it said that Peter or Mark or Luke were illiterate, thus that believed in a literal flood. Rather, they wrote of a literal flood because that was the interpretive norm of their culture, and God spoke through them using their understanding of the world and of scripture.
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It’s not a dilemma, it’s a fact about human literature: it’s not possible to write in human words and not have a genre. A genre can be quite simple – “shopping list” might qualify as a genre, the reason being that if you wrote a shopping list and someone else saw it there’s a darned good chance they’d recognize it as a shopping list.
And there’s the bridge to Genesis: the Holy Spirit didn’t use telepathy or any such thing to get His message across, He used the means that any writer back then had: genre and worldview. The first Genesis Creation account is in a form that if it had been read aloud in any society back then everyone would have recognized that this was ‘royal chronicle’ and temple inauguration, an probably also would have caught the polemic function since the account methodically demotes every Egyptian deity of any importance (after God did that in His own way with the plagues). There would have been nods of appreciation for a writer brilliant enough to write using two genres/forms at the same time, and – depending on where they were – some chuckles and then laughs at how the Egyptian gods are demoted and dissed.
You’re conflating two different things: the one is based on a misunderstanding of the scriptures, though it has its uses; the other is a matter of references to as much available data as possible.
You refuse to do the second one; you reject the historical context, you reject the fact that literature always has a genre and the one the writer chose is the only one in which the literature can be correctly understood.
No one can be "good at biblical theology’ without letting the Bible be what it is – ancient literature in ancient genres under an ancient worldview written for specific audiences the Holy Spirit wanted to address. Forcing the Bible to fit a modern worldview, which is where YEC comes from, is a guaranteed way to be wrong as often as not – and trying to make it talk science as YEC demands is even worse.
It’s not a “premise” and it’s not mine, it’s a fact about literature. That’s why serious study of the Bible tends to require a substantial amount of study of various kinds of literature, to get across the fact that different genres not only exist but that no literature can exist without one.
No, that’s not clear; it’s just what you impose on the text because of your blinders.
Even before I started grad school I was in programs where we committed to never claiming for any text more than that text claims for itself; anything else is dishonest. YEC is dishonest from the start because it is held as a foundational premise that the scriptures intend to be scientifically accurate – a position that cannot be derived from the scriptures, indeed a position that didn’t exist as a requirement for truth until quite recently in human history.
The only way to not investigate the genre of a piece of literature is if that literature is not human in any way – then, it might conceivably be possible that some other sentient race might avoid using genre, though I can’t see how that’s possible even if they had telepathy; we even think in different genres: consider the way you think when playing a video game versus watching a football game versus attending a lecture from someone like John Lennox. Studies have been done that show that in various different scenarios in life our different ways of thinking show up in our vocabulary, our sentence structure, our use of pacing and rhythm (including lack of them), even our pitch and the speed at which we speak.
Wish I had a link, but I read a paper last year arguing that there is little reason to believe that the Twelve and Jesus Himself were not at least fluent in Koine Greek on an everyday level. I found the arguments that Jesus was quite literate more compelling than for the disciples, but even taking the lowest level there were good arguments that any of them could have written a simple letter. That’s certainly not enough to write a Gospel (though with Mark it comes close, and in John as well though in the first the literacy limitations appear as natural whereas in the second they seem quite deliberate). Indeed they may not have been good at writing; it’s perfectly possible to speak and read a language and not be able to write it, or compose in it! – but that wouldn’t prevent any of them from slowly telling what he wanted to say for a professional scribe team who would write it for them (trivia: for important documents, high officials often used three scribes to be sure they got the wording right; if all three agreed on wording it was accepted, if one disagreed the version from the two was generally accepted; if all three disagreed the official would be consulted so they could get it right – a decent system of quality control for the time!).
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In my previous response to this I missed the fact that Biologos explains theistic evolution as different from evolutionary creationism in order to reject the former and affirm the latter. The main point seems to be that the former looks like a modification of the science of evolution, when that isn’t what Biologos wants at all. Other than this is the attempt to counter some of the objections to theistic evolution that this sounds Deistic to some people. I am particularly opposed to Deism, since the whole point of God’s creation was to have a relationship with us.
On the other hand, I am also particularly opposed to pantheism and the description of evolutionary creationism described in the link given by jpm to Biologos Faith Commitments uses the terminology which sound a bit too pantheistic for me. I believe God created something real and substantial which can stand on its own and not have to hold it up like a carpenter who cannot make tables and chairs properly to stand on their own. Perhaps some think this is helps their opposition to Deism to have God needed for keeping it all going. But for me this is contrary to the very reason I am opposed to Deism, which is a relationship with beings other than Himself. Furthermore, I don’t like the implication that I am some sort of creationist. I am certainly no such thing. Yes I believe God created the universe, but the purpose was to support the process of life, and thus for living things God’s role is that of a shepherd (and corrective) not a designer watchmaker responsible for every aspect of our existence.
The wording Moses chose was carefully selected: one of the great mysteries of the cosmologies of the Fertile Crescent was the issue of light; mostly it was considered to have always existed even before the gods. When Moses relates that God commanded light into existence, he just boosted YHWH-Elohim about every other claimant to be the Creator – which of course was true anyway, but how it got told drove a point home.
Commanding light to exist was also the first “battle” in the ‘royal chronicle’ perspective: by creating light and distinguishing it from darkness, Yahweh is shown to have defeated the realm of darkness with just two little words – no battle, no combat as with the cosmologies of the other nations. A comparison comes to mind: we have the idiom “I could take them at a walk”, meaning beating some foe would take no more effort than walking across the battlefield; Yahweh is shown to not even need to walk – He just commands.
The rest of that particular battle comes when God takes darkness and assigns it a job, part of the day/night cycle. That was an accomplishment no other deity then and there even claimed, to have so vanquished darkness that they could assign it a task like one would order a slave! and again Yahweh is preeminent, shoving darkness into a role of being a servant not just to Him but to all the living things still to come. That may not seem like much to us, but to put it in context, darkness in all the other cosmologies was something that the gods had to fight and defeat every single night so the sun on his chariot or barque could emerge again on the other side of the Earth-disk and again climb the solid firmament to light the world and go down again; for Yahweh, darkness was just a servant. That’s what’s going on with the “evening … morning” chorus; evening followed by morning is a period of darkness, and by repeating the refrain each day it is driven home that the two great ‘forces’ before which even the gods quailed were Yahweh’s servants – and it turned into Israel’s measure for a day, the sense of the words taken as “light faded, light returned” as indicating the two portions of the day.
They still would have – it would have been an affirmation of His identity as Yahweh.
. . . even tried to figure out how to play it using model ships in a friend’s parents farm pond.
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The oldest witness to a western, Roman creed is Hippolytus’s Apostolic Tradition 21 (c. 220), which has a three-part interrogatory creed to be used at baptism. It reads:
Do you believe in God the Father almighty?
Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was raised up alive on the third day from among the dead, went up to heaven, and is seated at the Father’s right hand?
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit in the Holy Church?
(Joseph T. Lienhard, “Apostles’ Creed,” in The Dictionary of Historical Theology, ed. Trevor A. Hart.)
This creed unites Christians with a different Christology (whether that may be unitarian, binitarian or trinitarian). But it excludes people who deny Jesus as Messiah in the flesh (e.g. gnostics).
So I think this would be a nice place to start when discussing basic fundamentals of belief.
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There have been some additions as the creed was developed over time. The only division the creed caused was the East/West split over the Filioque which concerned the procession of the Son.
The theological definition of Jesus in the creed was accepted by Christendom until the Enlightenment, higher text criticism (questioning the historicity of the Gospel of John) and so forth.
The decisions of the third ecumenical councils was not accepted by the Syriac or Assyrian churches, who also rejected the decisions of the fourth council, Chalcedon 451, and fifth council, Constantinople 553.
The oriental orthodox churches only accept the validity of the first three ecumenical councils.
And while the biggest schism with the Eastern Orthodox is dated 1053, their disputes with decisions of the Western councils go back further than this, though some of these ended up overturned by subsequent councils. That was one of the problems with the Roman church which changed when a new pope came into power.
The point is that I see no reason to go beyond the first decision of Nicea 325 AD for a definition of the Christian religion which would include these branches excluded by later decisions of smaller and smaller portions until they eventually were just the decisions of separate denominations rather than anything really ecumenical at all.
Given your understanding of the history of doctrine, I’m perplexed why you said
My commitment to truth surpasses my belief. I don’t believe in altering facts to fit what I believe. I simply believe in spite of such things.
For example, I was raised on criticisms of Christianity. So much so that I have often been able to criticize Christianity better than most atheists. But I came to believe Christianity had great truth to it and not because the criticisms were wrong, but because they are not the whole story. And I found that most of those criticism were in the Bible. Thus you often hear me speak of how religious people too often use religion including Christianity for the purpose of power over other people. It is a truth I have understood since childhood. But understanding there is truth to Christianity in spite of this, means there is a need to distinguish between what is from God and what comes from the sinful desires of human beings. My rule of thumb is that when something serves a purpose well then that is the most likely origin of it. Thus I seek a Christianity where those things which serve its use for power over others has been cut out of it. Those using Christianity in a culture war with a battle mentality against the world find this impossible to understand let alone accept. They can hardly see what the point of Christianity could be when you make it useless for pushing their way of thinking and doing things on other people. Obviously, I think they are the ones have missed the boat.
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Dan Brown’s take on Nicea is made even more curious by his capitalization of the pronoun for Jesus.
Why not the Arian view?
The 4th ecumenical council had nothing to do with the Nicene Creed.
I’m not familiar with any Pope flipping the decisions of a council.
The 325 draft of the creed was not Trinitarian, so the creed required more refinement. Believe what you want, but most people are sincere in their religious beliefs. What happened when you pitched your ideas to your pastor? Is your denomination involved in ecumenical dialog with other denominations?
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Dan Brown’s writings are works of fiction. When I read the Da Vinci code and enjoyed it like other science fiction and fantasy novels, but I never saw any of them as having much of anything to do with reality – no more than Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.
As for Bart Ehrman’s take on the Arian controversy, I share some of his feeling that they sure seemed to blow small differences of opinion way out of proportion. I would not agree with Arius though. I definitely like the Christian position on this issue. And I am pretty sure that there are a number of people on this forum who like myself really like this idea of the incarnation as God become man, so they wouldn’t like the take of Arius on this either.
Christianity split into branches over the decisions of those councils long before the one over the filloque. That is a fact of history and not any so called “ideas” which I am pitching. I frankly doubt that most Protestant churches would feel any need to defend the history of the Catholic church and its popes. And if we find common cause with the Catholics now, it is because of the counter-reformation which reversed many of the things the Protestants reformation was criticizing. And I think most of the evangelical churches are even less interested in this legalism over Christian dogma.
I disagree. The essence of Trinitarian doctrine is that Jesus is God and that is likewise the essence of the 325 draft of the creed. I certainly do not agree with any attempt to equate Trinitarian doctrine with the fabrication of some “triune nature” of God which is not in the Bible in any way shape or form. And I heard no complaints from my church over this idea that one good reason for the word “triune” was to shut the door against anyone wanting to add to the three persons of God which are spoken of in scripture. But apparently you would have spoken loudly if you were there. I am glad you were not, since I probably wouldn’t go to that church any more if so.
I frequently encounter Xtians which make atheism look preferable. And it is obvious to me that I would choose atheism over a Christianity where such had their way, dictating to Christians what they must believe.
My question about Arianism was not entirely irrelevant (just saw the edit)
Really?
You have to admit this looks like a commitment to one’s preference
It is rare that I try to extract theological ideas from fiction. I have done so for the TV show Lucifer, but even so it was more a matter of amusement than serious theological discussion.
An exception might be the fictional works of C. S. Lewis but I think promoting an understanding of Christianity was a big part of his motivation in those books.
As for historical fiction… one of my favorites was the SPQR series by John Maddox Roberts about a detective in ancient Rome. One of the amusing things about it was how strange people thought his preoccupation with the truth about who really did it. I must admit I learned a lot about Rome I didn’t know before. But I never thought of Dan Brown’s books being in the category of historical fiction.
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I don’t know of anyone else who put The DaVinci Code in a category with LOTR.
But the capitalization of the pronoun was curious.
Somehow I ended up watching this movie, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, and found it believable until the end 
The foundation of the dogma of the Trinity is in the Old Testament, so that assertion is puzzling. Both trinitarian thinking and the concept of the Incarnation can be found in the century before Christ.
That’s a bit like looking for matches that can’t be used for arson – any compelling and helpful system of thought can be misused for power.
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When the core elements of a book are pure fantasy it does not qualify as historical fiction, it falls into the category of fantasy that happens to use some aspects of history for background.
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We should look what Jesus told about himself. The writings of John the apostle are also informative because he knew the teachings of Jesus (and Jesus) better than anyone outside the closest followers of Jesus.
Arian could not win in the theological debates of his time, which indicates that he did not have compelling arguments for his pet hypothesis. Instead, Arian seemed to be a talented politician that could speak the rulers to support his side. These rulers forced the official church to teach Arianism, for a century if I remember correctly.
I guess one reason why Arian found some support is because the idea of incarnation, that the only true God would appear in flesh and live among us, was against the gnostic and related teachings and also difficult to grasp. Arianism provided an explanation that seemed more easy to fit into the common thinking - it reduced God to fit inside the human head and apparently also to fit the prevailing philosophies.
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Nope, you took this out of context. It is more like making a distinction between matches and biological/chemical/nuclear weapons, and not pretending the latter are household items which can simply be misused.
I never said I thought you could make a religion which cannot be misused. Quite the contrary, I always say that religion is dangerous with great caution required. The idea is to distinguish those things which frankly look like they have been specifically invented for the misuse of religion, because they serve that purpose better than any other.
First I did not say the doctrine of the Trinity which is that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct persons but only one God. I said there is nothing in the Bible about any triune nature of God – nothing about God being three of anything.
Second, I think the hunt for justifications in the Bible (like car salesmen justifying their sales pitch) in no way equals there being anything in the Bible which says anything of the kind.
I find your assertion more than puzzling – plain dishonest, frankly.
What??? Are you talking about the ideas of other religions putting out beliefs that their favorite person is some kind of deity born of a virgin and such. Are you trying to make me laugh, or are you going to provide some evidence of substance?