Please explain.
What biblical reasons are there to accept the scientific view of the earth as billions of years old?
You are right. I stand corrected.
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The Law of Moses is not synonymous with the Pentateuch. The Law of Moses is within the Pentateuch.
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Biblically speaking, âlawâ (being the English translation from the Hebrew Torah) refers to the first five books of the Bible - often referred to by biblical scholars as the Pentateuch. Thus âthe law of Mosesâ is âthe torah of Mosesâ is âthe first five books of the Bible by Moses.â
My dear brothers (@Mike_Gantt & @Jonathan_Burke) . . . I know you are quite distracted by all this beautiful hair-splitting âŚ
But perhaps one or both of you can comment on this simple problem: How can Evangelicals fixate on the perfection of the Old Testament, when:
a) Jesus successfully challenged the validity of stoning adulterers;
b) Jesus successfully advanced the scripture saying âwe are Godsâ;
c) Jesus (or his most correct followers) successfully challenged the validity of circumcision;
d) Jesus successfully challenged the law of Moses prohibiting the consumption of Godâs blood.
Each of these four positions involves special interpretive methods, all of which are more significant (and more robust) than the scientific/scriptural interpretations regarding the 6 Days of Creation.
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Biblically speaking? Where does the Bible say âthe lawâ means âthe first five books of the Bibleâ? Youâre mixing up Bible and post-biblical tradition. When the Bible uses âtorahâ it refers to the Law of Moses. When Jesus refers to âthe Lawâ, he refers to the Law of Moses. When Jesus quotes Genesis, why does he not call it âthe Lawâ, or âthe Law of Mosesâ, or attribute it to Moses? Simple question.
I am not an evangelical, and this is not my problem.
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How then would you characterize yourself?
Actually, Mike, you wonât like this, but thereâs an easy way to measure their confidence. Do they empirically test their own hypotheses, doing their best to falsify them?
If not, they have neither conviction nor confidence. In fact, I would say that they lack faith in what they are saying!
Mike appears to do a lot of thatâŚ
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One way of describing the NTâs message is to say that Jesus - most notably through His resurrection from the dead - is the greater prophet Moses promised in Deut 18:15-18 (Acts 3:22-23). As such, He should be expected to take Mosesâ text and give it new meaning (John 1:17). Since He was bringing the kingdom of God, civil punishments were no longer appropriate (a). Circumcision was of the heart, not of the flesh (c). Jesus was thus not pressing for the physical consumption of blood (d), but for the spiritual apprehension of the sacrifice He was making on the worldâs behalf.
As a general rule, Jesusâ interpretation of Torah intensified its moral requirements (e.g. adultery disallowed in the thought life and not just in behavior) and removed its non-moral requirements (e.g. dietary laws). His reference to Ps 82 (b) was to the resurrection of humanity, for heaven was the dwelling place of gods (i.e. angels) and not men - yet Jesus taught that resurrection led to Him, to where He would be after His crucifixion and resurrectionâŚin heaven (Matt 22:30; John 14:2)âŚwhich was an eye-opening and even jarring concept to those who assumed that it led only to earth, if anywhere at all (Matt 22:23; Acts 23:6-8).
Such understandings do not require a panoply of interpretive methods or a clever mind; rather, they require an appreciation of the role Jesus came to fill: Lord and Lawgiver. He Himself is the interpretive key of the Bible - Old Testament and New. To Him be our praise!
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Science requires testable hypotheses and empirical facts. It is theists who claim that the actions of God are not testable and not empirical. It is theists who keep God out of science.
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Hi MIke,
I appreciate that you are making explicit how you arrived at your conclusions. You implicitly demonstrate that the Scripture we revere does not speak unambiguously about a timeline; rather, to get to a timeline you have to derive implications based on certain assumptions. As we have learned in this and other interesting threads you have started on Biologost, these assumptions include but are not limited to:
- assumptions about what kind of history different passages present to the reader,
- assumptions about the nature of the genealogies,
- assumptions about the extent to which God might have accommodated His revelation to the cultural state of the original audience
- assumptions about the role of ontologies, and what kinds of questions they should be answering
Since you have, by using the word âimplied,â acknowledged that you are bringing a variety of assumptions to your reading of the ScriptureâŚ
âŚand since you have implicitly acknowledged that a drawing of implications must take place by some process of reasoningâŚ
âŚIâm wondering why you seem to have such a deep adherence to the assumptions and reasoning process you had before you came to Biologos.
As various ones of us have presented alternative frameworks for you to consider, you have rejected them all on the basis of the fact that they disagree with the assumptions and reasoning process you started with. I honestly donât see how you are going to make any progress on this issue while you fiercely defend your starting assumptions and reasoning process. No one could. If you insist on not allowing any assumptions to be questionedâand I would argue that many of your assumptions are molded by the eyeglasses of culture that you (like anyone, including me) wearâthen you will inevitably end up in the same place.
With such a mentality, you will not even be able to acknowledge that strong contradictions can result from applying your assumptions to the Scripture. Instead, you might claim that, for example, that the Nephilim must have both been destroyed by the flood and reconstituted as a people that branched off from Noahâs descendants. Is this the best way to treat the inspired text? The Bible simply says that the Nephilim existed both before and shortly after the Genesis 7 flood. Ancient Jewish scribes concluded that the flood must have been local, given the contents of the text. What you regard as necessary implications look extremely ad hoc to someone who doesnât hold your assumptions. In fact, they seem quite forcefully inserted into a Scripture that does not actually contain them.
I believe that the same thing is happening with respect to the question of the age of the earth. You hold assumptions that others, including Augustine 1600 years ago and the rest of us on this thread today, do not hold. Moreover, you reason from those assumptions in ways that are not even required by your assumptions. (As just one example, it is possible to maintain a highly literalistic hermeneutic while viewing the Genesis flood as local rather than global, based on the indisputable fact that the Hebrew word 'eretz almost always has a local rather than global frame of reference.)
Learning to identify what oneâs own assumptions are, and questioning whether they are really essential to pleasing God, is not an easy task. Most people never even start down that path at all. And you can certainly please God and serve Him effectively without starting down that path. If you wrap up your time here at the Biologos forum without changing your mind about anything, please do not think that I or anyone else here will think badly of your faith and how you are practicing it. We are servants of the same master, and He is the one who judges us.
At the same time, in certain situations and in certain kinds of ministries, identifying and questioning assumptions is an important skill.* It was certainly an essential skill when I served the Lord in West Africa. And it is very important for those who must deal with modern science in some way, if they want to maintain a robust faith in God and a reverence for the Scripture. Perhaps you could view your conversations here at Biologos as an opportunity to develop that skill, and to see how you might apply it with respect to Genesis.
Grace and peace,
Chris Falter
*Or perhaps I should say, an important gift?
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This is precisely the problem. Mike has made it clear that he is perfectly happy to change his view, as long as he can retain all the assumptions which lead inexorably to his current view.
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Am I the only person in this BioLogos Forum who believes that Jesus regarded Moses as the author of the Torah?
Well, then, @Mike_Gantt, I think Evangelicals can make a pretty good case for the following, as exerted and confirmed by Jesus::
[TYPO: I neglected to replace Mikeâs ID with my own⌠my apologies for that oversight.]
Post of the Week, Chris!
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I wrote a serious response to what I took to be a serious set of questions from you which gave me opportunity to honor Jesus our Lord and, I hoped, to edify mainly you and perhaps others as well in the process. I am perplexed at this response from you.
These are your statements which you have now posted as if they are mine. If you want to re-post what I wrote about your statements, you are welcome to do so. However, for you to simply take your statements as you originally wrote and put them beneath my name as if I wrote them, is very disappointing and disconcerting to me. I do not feel that that those statements as written honor Jesus. I would appreciate it if you would delete that post as I would not want anyone to think that I wrote such things as stated that way.
Do you believe that Moses wrote posthumously?
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Does belief in Moses as the author of the Pentateuch âlead inexorablyâ to a denial of evolution and an old earth?
No. Now how about answering my question?
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