Thank you very much! I will certainly read these!
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You don’t really know what the authors believed 2600-3600 years ago when Genesis 1-2 were being told orally or written. This is an anachronism. But even then, if they did take things as history, why is God not able to speak truth through worldviews, language, culture and background assumptions that people held thousands of years ago? What message is being conveyed in that limited and fallible medium? It seems to me you are critiquing a magical book that some people think fell from heaven. I share your view here.
A text with errors can still be inspired. I believe God simply nudged various authors in the directions He wanted. I see no indication He over-rode their personalities, their worldviews or prevented them from errors. A text edited over time is also not a bad thing. God continually works and nudges His followers in the direction He wants, shaping believers, churches and texts according to His purposes. But God seems big on freedom and not forcing things which is why I think so many views on inspiration fail miserably.
Yes, the Bible does, on its own, when studied critically, looks like any other comparable anthology or set of ancient works. It’s not a magical book that as long as we decode it correctly we know the truth. It is a living document. It is polyvalent and multi-vocal but needs to be read canonically. On its own, it has no sway. It’s just paper from a publisher with human opinions. It is when it is read in spirit that the Bible has power.
I prefer the term “life-giving” over inspired. The latter carries to much baggage with it. Karl Barth has said:
The Bible has proved and will prove itself to be a true and fitting instrument to point man to God and his work and his words, to God who alone is infallible. Since the Bible is a human instrument and document, bound and conditioned by the temporal views of nature, of history, of ideas, of values, it to that extent is not sinless, like Jesus Christ himself, and thus not infallible, like God. No wonder that seen from the perspective of the worldviews and the concepts of other ages; the question may arise whether we have to conclude that the Bible is not solid. I should never say such a thing, but would admit rather the occurence of certain, let us say, tensions, contradictions, and maybe if you prefer, “errors,” in its time-bound human statements.[ref]Barth in Conversation, Kindle Loc. 4382-4391[/ref]
Another way of phrasing this from Morrison
is reasons are clear: the Bible is not the Son of God. It is a human book. As a human book, it is vulnerable to the errors of human, historical limitations. It is not a divine oracle sent down from heaven. However, it bears witness to the Word of God, and it is thus an indirect form of the Word by the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Bible points beyond itself to the Word of God; it does not contain within itself the Word. The Word of God is not bound to a book, yet this human book becomes God’s Word in its witness. We depend on the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, not on the “perfection” of a book.
the Bible serves the purpose for which God intends it. To lead us to Jesus. It does that in a lot of ways. Errors do not change this.
This is incorrect. There is no singular biblical view on women. The text is multi-vocal. It has multiple views on women. What I think you mean is it appears some Christians side with certain passages of scripture in subjugating women before men while ignoring others or forcing them to say something else. The role of women is undeniable in the early church:
16 I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon[a] of the church at Cenchreae,2 so that you may welcome her in the Lord, as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well.
3 Greet Prisca and Aquila, my coworkers in Christ Jesus, 4 who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but also all the churches of the gentiles. 5 Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert[b] in Asia for Christ. 6 Greet Mary, who has worked very hard for you. 7 Greet Andronicus and Junia,[c] my fellow Israelites who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.
A prominent female apostle. It’s sad how modern conservative commenters and various translations butcher this section and it is a glaring example of how theology forces people to make the Bible say what they want in translation (just compare the versions). But it’s plain as day that Paul refers to a female apostle. It’s staggering how so few Christians know this today. This is probably the seminal work in the field by Epp. It is short and worth its weight in gold.
Also, scholar Mark Goodacre, who agrees with Epp, disagrees with him and goes a step further, and thinks Junia was an apostle, but Mary was the first woman apostle. Two short podcasts by one of the most well known and respected New Testament scholars alive today:
NT Pod 12: Junia: the First Woman Apostle?
NT Pod 13: Mary Magdalene: the First Woman Apostle
Within the NT canon, as later books are written in Paul’s name, and some interpolations occur in his genuine works, we see woman being put back in their place. The Bible has misogyny in It for sure but it also transcends its culture and worldview at times and elevates women. It give us the tools we need to see through its darker elements. We just have to be willing to look. The problem is you have been trained by legions of Christians to treat the Bible like a magical book written in heaven.
It is inspired because God uses it as such. Maybe he built in some typology and nudged things in a certain direction. Maybe he didn’t. I think he did but either way the first sentence in bold is enough.
Vinnie
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Indeed ad hoc. I believe the fall of mankind and removal from the presence of God is a historic fact, that’s why we are here. Without Genesis 3 the Bible would have been a very thin book.
Consider also, Evolution without Genesis 3 (the fall) would mean God deliberately created Earth and all what lives on it with the necessity of death, that’s a bizarre thought and in direct conflict with God’s loving nature expressed to the maximum at the cross sacrificing his Son Jesus for our salvation and the forgiveness of our sins.
The big red line from Genesis through Revelation is about sin, the central issue of Christianity. We are here to learn about good and evil, have faith in God and make the right choices.
Or as Kierkegaard said - Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
That is a belief not a fact.
The whole notion that one man could overturn the whole of God’s creative work is ridiculous and humanly arrogant. Why would God change His perspective on every living thing because of one man? Each creation is a unique thing in it’s own right. To suggest that God should suddenly withdraw because of one single act of disobedience is to place God in a very bad and selfish light.
I get so fed up with people claiming a reality because of Scripture., especially Genesis 3.
Richard
Thank you for the detailed reply. How would you at Biologos reconcile this view of the Bible with the verses in it that seem to indicate that it is inerrant? These verses are often used by the members of my former denomination (Church of Christ) in an attempt to rule out such “heretical” views as yours.
The verses I had in mind (HCSB):
2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is inspired by God[b] and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness,”
2 Peter 1:20 "First of all, you should know this: No prophecy of Scripture comes from one’s own interpretation,”
2 Peter 1:21 “because no prophecy ever came by the will of man; instead, men spoke from God as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
John 16:13 " When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He will not speak on His own, but He will speak whatever He hears. He will also declare to you what is to come."
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Start reading what was a popular belief in the second, third, forth century before it became under pressure and was declared heresy by the Roman Catholic Church in the 6th century. Early Church Fathers believing that Adam & Eve represent the whole human race as taking part in the rebellion against God in Paradise. Not only Adam, but billions.
Theology is not by consensus or popularity.
Original or worldwide sin is a false doctrine. The world is not broken and God has not withdrawn from it. Neither does He limit Himself to one denomination or faith. Scripture does not control God or humanity.
Richard
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So what’s your understanding of Genesis 3?
I post regularly on the Biologos forum and enjoy the website, but just to be clear, I don’t speak for Biologos or have any professional affiliations with the organization. But I think your question tends to presuppose the answer. “Seems to indicate that it is inerrant.”
Where does that say inerrant? I prefer the language of the NRSV but it makes no difference. It says scripture is useful (or prifitable in the version you cite) for teaching, useful for rebuking, useful for correcting and useful for equipping us to do every good work. I am useful for a lot of things, killing ugly bugs, taking out the garbage, rubbing my wife’s feet, but as she will readily tell you, I am hardly inerrant. The word inspired means God-breathed and I take that exactly in the sense I described above: life giving. Jesus is the bread of life, the living water and the imagery in 2 Tim comes from God breathing the breath of life into Adam and Eve. Scripture is life-giving and so many people who proof-text hunt 2 Tim 3:16, fail to read the verse just before:
“and how from childhood you have known sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
My doctrine of scripture actually comes right from this (most likely 2nd century pseudepigraphical) work. It says nothing at all about inerrancy. An inerrant text can be useful but a useful text does not need to be inerrant.
I don’t disagree with the psudepigraphical author of 2 Peter writing in the late second century in principle, but I would dispute that every prophecy we see in the Bible was:
- From God. Do I even have to take Peter so woodenly?
- was written down accurately by the prophet who received the vision/prophecy
- was preserved perfectly maintaining its original form for centuries.
- is interpreted correctly by us.
- If scripture is not inerrant then Peter’s statement need not be treated as inerrant. He is appealing to scripture which at the time, everyone accepted as true, to bolster his own status. That is the intent of the passage, for good or nil. He just appeals to what everyone knows and accepts to boost his argument as best as I can tell.
- Some prophecy may be conditional. I mean, if repentance occurs, maybe the judgment doesn’t come. Or if the slide into apostasy doesn’t’ occur, maybe the liberation would have come.
- We have this idea that prophecy = magical future prediction. I think it is far richer than that. As an example, the book of Daniel can be dated based on its good and bad prophecy to the 160s BC. It gets everything before that right and seems to screw up after. The purpose of Daniel for me lies in the Jewish crisis during the Maccabean revolt. Whatever future predictions it has, it was very much concerned with the then and it was written for the people then dealing with that.
Yes, the Holy Spirit guides believers. To have correct doctrine? Or to satisfy 2 Tim 3:15-16? I think it’s the latter, to make us wise for salvation in Jesus and to equip us to do good works. Reading the Bible in Spirit goes far beyond accurate doctrine… God cares more about how well we treat one another than if our intellectual ducks are in order.
Vinnie
7 Likes
The theology accepted by a group is determined by the consensus of that group. It is the freedom of religion which guarantees this. Anyone who doesn’t agree is free to change to a different group.
“Original sin” is a phrase not a doctrine.
However if you search “doctrine of original sin,” the google AI will give you…
The doctrine of original sin is a Christian belief that humans are born into a state of sin because of Adam and Eve’s sin. It states that humans inherit this sin from Adam and Eve’s Fall, rather than committing it themselves.
I do not believe in this.
I stick to what the Bible actually says on this: 1 John 1:8.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
That means that by the time we can speak enough to say something with this meaning then we are not without sin. Sin consists of self-destructive habits which are learned just as language is learned – by imitation of those around us.
So the only “original sin” I believe in is the first sin by Adam and Eve misusing God’s gifts to them, and its consequences for all mankind. It is the nature of sin to spread and grow and so it did quite rapidly. And thus with the good heritage of what God taught Adam and Eve making them His children, also came a heritage of self-destructive habits.
Agreed.
The relationship with God was broken. The relationship with God is restored in Jesus.
Agreed.
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Simplistically?
It is a winge about the fact that life is not a bed of roses We have been thrown out of Paradise.because of our knowledge of good and evil.
The idea that God would deny us this knowledge conflicts with all that we knw about God.The idea that God could not prevent us from getting it ourselves contradicts the power of God. The idea that Adam could steal from God is human vanity.The idea that man could wreck God’s perfect creation makes man more powerful than God.(vanity) The idea that we look like Gods is human vanity. The idea that God would inflict pain or hardship as punishment contradicts the goodness of God. The idea that weeds could be a punishment is ludicrous, Plants reproduce using the wind and some animals so their placement has nothing to do with us one way or the other. Birthing pains are a necessity for the birthing process.
Having said all that, there is still a need for the Garden story.
Life is not a bed of roses and if you want to blame God then fair enough, but the alternative is ignorance (lack of the knowledge of good and evil)
Disobeying God is a sin and sins have consequences which are increased iif you start trting to claim that it was not your fault. Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the snake. but no one forced them to eat . it was their choice. (Original si is the antithesis of this because it puts all the blame on Adam instead of on the person who sinned)
Sin exists. Adam did not create it or even make the first one (The Devil was first, sin has no form, it cannot be created.) If we sin God we separate ourselves from God.
Adam is the theological first man. Christ’s lineage is traced to him confirming the humanity of Christ.
Essentially the Garden story is as much a myth as Genesis 1, but the reasons for it are very different. It is humanity coming to terms with its position on earth and our relationship with God. It also provides the reason for Christ’s sacrifice. We do sin. And it separates us from God, but instead of punishment God has provided His means of forgiveness. That does not change whether the sin was Adams’s or ours. In fact it makes it much greater if tthe sacrifice was for all and not just Adam.
Richard
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That others are already present on the earth is what the Bible says. There are all those people who Cain fears will kill him if he wanders around. To think the entire planet is filled with people in one generation is ridiculous. AND the Bible doesn’t say any such thing. What the Bible actually says is that when Cain is afraid of all these people in the world, Adam and Eve only had two children: Cain and Abel. So instead of inventing sisters and incest which is not in the text we can simply accept what the Bible actually says.
Golems of dust and bone? I don’t think so. If they are human, it means their bodies are the same genome as the rest of the species. And it is the human mind which God brought to life by speaking to them (inspiration which literally means God’s breath). Thus our bodies are the product of evolution as any look at our genome will show. And it is what God has taught us which gives us a heritage of the mind (ideas of love and personhood) by which we are the children of God.
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You were doing so well!
Shame you have to trot out Evolutionary dogma.
There are genetic problems with Adam and Eve, yes, but the similarity in genome between species is an indication of function not necessarily ancestry. Give God some credit in creation, I think He deserves that, don’t you? I would hope there was a midway point between control and ambivalence
Richard
Thank you. I was waiting for you to trot out creationist dogma, to give me a opportunity to explain more…
It is not dogma that the genome shows we are a product of evolution, it is a fact.
When enough information is provided to calculate all the details, that is when scientific hypothesis becomes fact. It is not just an hypothesis that the universe began with the big bang 13.8 billion years ago because we have many ways of calculating when this happened with increasing accuracy. And it is not just an hypothesis that all living things on the earth have have common ancestors because we can calculate when the common ancestor of any two species existed in complete agreement with measured rates of mutation and fossils found in the measured dates of geologic strata where they are. All in complete agreement with a nested hierarchy of evolution and in complete disagreement with independently designed organisms according to structure and function only.
I give God MUCH more credit than you Deist Watchmaker (machine-maker) inspired creationists, as instead someone who chose love and freedom over power and control to bring forth the self-organizing phenomenon of life where organisms make their own choices and learn for themselves what works and how they want to live. Thus God has the entirely Biblical role of shepherd to share in that process of development with the same corrective hand we see demonstrated in the Bible over and over again.
I know… I know… its not convenient for religious professionals who want to play the role of speaking for God to dictate to everyone how “God wants them to live.”
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Like I said ambivalent.
God lit the blue touch paper and retired immediately. And sat and waited for several billion years for something to happen, yeah!
that is not the correct definition of fact.
Whether you like it or not, Evolution and specifically ToE will always be a theory.
ToE does not work without God’s help. The fact that science refuses to accept that it doesn’t work is not my fault.
Richard
I find this view slightly confusing:
- Are Adam and Eve real people in your opinion?
- What role did God have in creating this evolved earth?
- How come the rest of humans living on this evolved Earth didn’t get to enjoy the presence of God?
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To pipe in.
Both ways of looking at it are quite common, largely because “Adam” means man – but was Adam named man or were we all named for Adam? Personally I see no reason not to see them as real people because it agrees with the way God does things all throughout the Bible – choosing people with which to start something new. I just don’t believe in a magical creation of them.
ProDeo was merely observing that the non historical way of looking at the story is not a new invention coming out of evolution.
I certainly think God created the universe to support the self-organizing process of life. And since He created for a relationship, He was always a participant in the role of shepherd and teacher using correction to steer things away from unproductive directions.
I think it is the choice of love and freedom over power and control. God thus sticks to the way life works which is to start with a seed and grow from there. It keeps our own participation and choices involved in our development. The frequent references to life in the Bible is more than just using the familiar. I think life and free will are the same thing. I certainly don’t believe in any magical free will or the addition of supernatural stuffs to make things alive and a person. All the evidence tells us that we are alive and a person because of our composition, organization, and processes and not because of some supernatural thing inserted into us.
Can you imagine what the world would be like if instead of one Jesus there were thousands, one for all the different languages and cultures, all coming at the same time? Do you think that would have had a good result? I do not. Sounds like micromanaging to me. It sounds like choosing power and control over love and freedom.
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Okay, this is beginning to make a little sense.
Amazingly said.
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You confuse the word “theory” with “hypothesis.” There is no opposition between the correct meaning of “theory” and the meaning of “fact.” Relativity is a theory and it is a fact. Atomic theory is fact. There is a long list of scientific theories which are facts.
Thus your crowing here is just silly.
AND these calculations are FULL of surprises. So while they completely confirm the general principle of common ancestry, our picture of how all the species are interrelated keeps changing as the genome comparisons give us more information.
Structures with the same function have completely different DNA because the DNA similarity matches what they evolved from and not any structural similarity. So bat wings have a greater genetic similarity to cat paws than to bird wings. And the fins of whales and dolphins have greater genetic similarity to the legs of hippos than to the fins of seals and and penguins. The human eye is genetically more closely related to the eyes of insects than to the eyes of octopii even though the eyes of the octopus are much more similar to ours in structure.
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