I.e. neither infallible nor inerrant and therefore not inspired.
My impression is that he is trying to have his cake and eat it too. He does not want to alienate his more conservative readers, thus retains a historical Adam and a concordant reading, but in so doing creates more problems, and as you said lacks consistency. It may be a path many may take in the church however, as they realize a young earth is not compatible with reality, yet are not ready to give up on some vestige of a historical reading.
7 Likes
There are Christians like me who never had anything like YEC view and yet prefer an historical Adam for entirely different reasons.
What is the basis of your claim that Craig has a concordant reading of the story? Just curious.
BTW I am not a fan of Craig either. And I don’t like his use of biology to date Adam as if biology were the sum and essence of our humanity. It invariably leads to putting Adam so far in the past that you end up doing far more damage to the significance of the story than a metaphorical view.
2 Likes
I wonder when conservative Christians like Craig and Piper will ever show the way in social justice? You know, real Christianity?
1 Like
Thanks for this discussion of Craig’s book. You (Ye/You guys/Y’all) have saved me a good deal of time.
1 Like
That was using the term very loosely and sloppily on my part, referring to his desire to make a historical Adam concordant with a biologic Adam.
I personally don’t mind the Adam story, it was the true meaning if any, I was after and I would not let it go.
Personally, during the 40+ years of revisiting this story, I’ve noted a number of extremely interesting empirically matched analogies. Especially one that doesn’t need the included sin narrative as it looks to pre-date evil, and instead serves as the foundation for both good and evil. I was long looking for an answer to the evil question that was predominant in my surroundings and was very much on my mind, which I eventually phrased as; How can imperfection enter perfection?
In contrast to the boring and dumb [lit.] possibility of the universe having no knowledge in the beginning, the garden story concept starts with an all-knowing God and is a continuation of the prior divisions, adding the separation of knowledge.
I discovered the division of knowledge is the act from which naivete is even able to manifest and persist. Playfully I have tried to cut to the point with analogies of being all-knowing below in defense of naivete (aka innocence).
If we were all-knowing, is there no surprise followed by laughter?
Where has awe and wonderment gone? Curiosity and achievement?
Why do we say; “shhh! Don’t tell me how it ends”?
Is there a choice when the best is obvious and singular?
Naivete may make us prone to errors, but it is also a precious and needed gift for eternity. May there always be something new to discover and experience. A little good/bad action happening. Evil seems a separate manifestation as judgment is based on poor intent towards others, while good intent in error deserves mercy as the sermon on the mount claims. Naivete may be a primal foundation for evil such as lies to manifest, whereas truth and knowledge dispersed our naivete as well as the falseness preying upon it much like proper scientific test results do. Results trump all theories. But naivete by its nature is considered innocent, not evil. To error with good intent doesn’t deserve punishment else our kids would hate us.
Personally, it’s the natural concept of division (the how) that attracts me and the innocence of naivete that makes the whole thing empirically fit as a good description of the human condition. I enjoyed the beauty and function of the idea. Starting with the concept of all-knowing, through natural division of knowledge, naivete, diversity, and how it could have been done, I find beauty and awe. Personally, starting out with everything dumb is as Klax puts it, not inspiring. grin
Equating omniscience to all-knowing is much like equating omnipotence to all-doing, which is absurd. I insist that omniscience means God can know whatever He chooses just as omnipotence means He can do whatever He chooses (with logical coherence simply being the difference between reality and dreams). I am forced to such a conclusion by quantum physics which shows that knowledge is an action of interference and imposition - because measurements alter what they measure. Until you measure it, what you measure may not even exist. So talking like just God knows everything just doesn’t agree with a reality where some things simply do not exist to be known. Thus saying God must know the future equates to saying God must absolutely control the future. And that doesn’t agree with either the Bible or our experience of life, where plenty of things do not happen according to the will of God.
Since God is not time-bound, what is there that he cannot know?
1 Like
…end of conversation,
Aye, aye captain.
Nothing.
Omniscient means God CAN know whatever He chooses to know.
The question is, can God not know something if He chooses not to. I think it is the essence of free will that God does not choose to know what we will do before we do it. It is a little like having a book and choosing to read it in order rather than looking at the ending ahead of time. Only in this case it the book isn’t already written and we are writing it together.
If God looks ahead then what is it that He sees? Does he only see what will happen if He stops participating? In that case, either He will follow through with not participating or what He saw wasn’t the future… or do you think He has no choice? In which case how is that different from simply jumping forward in time and seeing only the past.
He doesn’t look ahead. He is not bound by time, he is already there. ‘Look ahead’ is time-bound language.
Then we are just characters in a book and I don’t believe characters in a book are alive or conscious.
There is a wonderful (or terrible) mystery in how God orchestrates his providential interventions of timing and placing in the lives of his children without violating anyone’s free will and without breaking any natural laws. He is also not bound by your characterization, nor are we.
2 Likes
Don’t believe it. That’s the dream world again where the dreamer isn’t bound by any rationality. And you know what I think of the dreamer god – no better than any other dreamer.
Same song, second verse – you have sung it before many times. Do you believe God acts interveningly into his children’s lives? Is he bound by time? Dream is an important word in your vocabulary, I guess. Were Maggie and Rich Stearns dreamers dreaming?
You know I do.
You say that like time is singular or absolute. It is not. It just an ordering of events. The physical universe has one such ordering of events as part of its mathematical space-time structure. And no, God is not a part of that structure. Nor is God part of any other space-time structure outside of Himself. But this does not mean He is incapable of ordering His own events or that He cannot make use of time or space for Himself as He chooses.
Nor does it mean that the physical universe is a fixed four-dimensional structure like an already written story. The evidence tells us otherwise that the future exists only as a superposition of possibilities. Observed from outside the space-time structure, the part existing as a superposition would be like the part of a book that hasn’t been written or read yet. Yes God can read any part of the book as He chooses but not without changing it. To read the book is to write it, just as in quantum physics to make a measurement of a particle is to alter the particle to fit the measurement results.
I say that like God is omnitemporal, which ain’t those. I thought you had been around long enough you might have remembered.
Here, read another dreamer’s dreamy dream:
That touches on the mystery, only just. But God is changeless, and all his thoughts are instantaneous (that is a time-bound word too, isn’t it).
This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.