Ok. Now I get it.

Well, you wrote that Jesus held to a "significant portion" of Jewish theology. I think it would certainly at least be more precise to say that Jesus held to 100% of true Jewish theology and 0% to untrue Jewish theology. Jesus is the author of true Jewish theology.

But, I think I know what you really meant, so we're on the same page here I think.

LOL to the bolded part.

1. I'm feeling a lot better now.

2. I just purchased and started reading a book by astrophysicist and YEC Jason Lisle (Phd), Understanding Genesis: How to Analyze, Interpret, and Defend Scripture.

3. I think I'm almost ready, willing and able to make a substantive foundational statement ITT.

Y'all have a blessed day!

Hi, Aaron. Just wondering if you missed this question I asked you a little over a week ago. (Or maybe I missed your answer?)

Looks like I missed it.

Interpreted from a literalist's interpretation? Nope.

But I would affirm that they are all accurate accounts of actual theological information about God and his relationship with his creation.

Thank you for your response.

Given your response, I would ask that we for the time being abandon the YEC topic, and start a new thread about whether or not the OT is (among other things) a collection of largely history books.

In my opinion, the YEC topic can't be properly addressed until it is first established whether or not Genesis is a history book.

What say you?

I view this as essentially the same discussion. The only way you get to YEC is that you interpret Genesis as a book of literal history.

As far as I can tell, there is just no other way to affirm YEC. So in some way or another, you're going to have to address your literalist theological perspective. Whether that's through YEC in particular or Genesis in general, it's really up to you.

Ultimately, I'm just waiting for you to make a positive argument in support of your position.

+1

Thanks for your input, Aaron. I'll start a new thread on why I believe that Genesis is best understood as a history book. Maybe after we hash that issue out, we can discuss other YEC issues in this thread.

Why not just give the argument here, in this thread? It's been 80 posts and a month since the OP. You've yet to give the "foundational statement" you keep promising. Presumably that statement will include why you think genesis is meant to be a literally interpreted history book. It doesn't need its own thread, it just needs you to actually lay out your views.

Please see post #78.

Still having some health issues. I don't have any problem posting short "shoot from the hip" comments, but carefully thinking through and putting together an opening statement for a debate on a topic that I'm not an expert about is quite a task for me right now. But I am working on it.

I think I'm with uke on this one. You *could* start a new thread, but why not just hash it all out here? It's part of the same overall argument.

Okay, we'll sling the hash here!

My "Opening Statement" will be to quote a few paragraphs from the late preacher W. A. Criswell's book Why I Preach That the Bible is Literally True. This is from the chapter 13, "Fact or Fable in Genesis", pp. 129-130:

What do I preach, believing that the Bible is literally true? I preach the truth of the revelations of God in the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis. This, of course, is in diametrical opposition to the position taken by most modern theologians. In our present day [1969] the first eleven chapters of Genesis are reduced to myth and legend. The typical contemporary ecclesiastic looks upon the stories of Genesis as one would look upon the story of "Jason and the Golden Fleece," the exploits of Hercules, or the legends written by Homer and Virgil.

Is this the attitude of Jesus and of the apostles? It is not! Our Lord Jesus Christ endorsed the Mosaic story of the creation of Adam and Eve (Matt. 19:4-6). He verified the divine inspiration of the Genesis account of creation. These chapters are received by our Lord not as a myth but as the writings of Moses presenting the truth of God. Surely our divine Saviour would not mistake a myth for history.

The divinely inspired account of the creation of man in Genesis is also accepted by Paul who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Compare Romans 5:14. Read 1 Corinthians 15:21-22,45,47. Paul would hardly build these tremendous doctrinal arguments in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 on cleverly composed fables. He looked upon these narratives in Genesis as being historical revelations from God. Paul's inspired deductions from the coming of sin and death through the disobedience and fall of Adam, the original head of the race, form the basis for his glorious announcement of redemption, regeneration, and re-creation in the second Adam, who is the Lord Jesus Christ from heaven.

Genesis lays the foundation for the whole revelation in the Book of God. It contains an authoritative answer for the human race concerning matters of everlasting interest -- the being of God, the origin of the universe, the creation of man, the origin of the soul, the introduction of sin, the promise of salvation, the division of the human race, the out-calling of Israel, the outworking of God's redemptive program. In fact, in this one inspired volume of beginnings we have the doctrinal background for all that is revealed in the Bible concerning sin, salvation, and the ultimate purposes of God for humanity.

###

I thought that Criswell was far more eloquent than anything that I could come up with.

I look forward to Aaron's response.

I pray that a most edifying conversation will result.

It's not just the present day. But in fact the non-literal reading of the Bible dates back quite far.

For example, from St. Augustine [400 AD]:

http://www.scottmacdonald.net/genesi...0bks%201-2.pdf

In this essay, he is very clearly against a literal reading. For example, read sections 37-39 on pages 185-187. If you're looking for a version that's formatted as text and not a scan, here's an alternate link that has an excerpt.

https://www.ancient.eu/article/91/st...ng-of-genesis/

He clearly does *NOT* understand the framing of what a non-literal reading of the text entails. Theologians that hold a non-literal reading of Genesis still hold that Genesis holds theological truths, whereas they would not purport the same of the other myths and legends referenced. This can rightly be seen as a strawman.

This is just a misreading of the reality around him. I can affirm the following: "He verified the divine inspiration of the Genesis account of creation. These chapters are received by our Lord not as a myth but as the writings of Moses presenting the truth of God." The distinction, however, is that "the truth of God" is not that it contains truths of creation, but that it contains truths of God, that is, truths about God.

Bolded: Of course he wouldn't.

Underlined: There's no reason to believe that he was building the narrative upon a historical revelation from God as much as he was building the narrative upon a theological revelation from God.

I can affirm this entire paragraph without requiring a literal reading of the book of Genesis.

Mostly what I see is a flawed reasoning and authoritative rhetoric in this quote. Put more simply, he says "I believe Genesis is literal because I believe that Jesus and Paul believed it is literal." That's fine. But he presents no reasons why we should believe that Jesus and Paul believed it is literal.

Thank you for your detailed response, Aaron.

Luke 3:23-38 lists Mary's genealogy. Included in the genealogy are Adam, Abraham and Isaac, which in an earlier post you said that you weren't sure if they really existed or not.

Since the genealogy has Adam at the beginning and Jesus at the end, and given that you're not sure about the actual existence of Adam but are sure about the existence of Jesus, at what point in the genealogy does it actually start listing real people?

I look forward to your response.

I have no idea. And I don't need to know. Considering the difficulty that people often have tracking their genealogies back more than 4-5 generations even in our modern era, complete with possibilities of children out of wedlock, those brought into the family by adoption, and so forth, I have no problem supposing that factual errors may have entered into the tradition.

I don't play the infallible/inerrant game. People have used those words to mean different things so that it's difficult to have a useful conversation. For some, these words are interchangeable. For others, one is stronger than the other, and which one is stronger depends on who you're talking to.

What I believe about the Bible is that it is "true" in the sense that the theological truths about God that it contains are a true representation of who God is. Therefore for me, understanding truth begins with holding to the important theological truths first, and then historical truths second.

There are still tipping points. For example, 1 Corinthians 15:12-34 seems to be pretty clear about the necessity of an actual resurrected Jesus (though I should say that's it's possible that I'm wrong about this interpretation). This is an intersection of the theological with the historical.

The genealogies... not so much. There's no theological loss if, at some point in the list, there is a statement that isn't historically accurate. For example, let's say that there were an accidental insertion of a name, or a misspelling. The only loss at that point is that we lose historical inerrancy. But I already don't bother with historical inerrancy, so it doesn't matter to me.

What we have in both Matthew and Luke's accounts are their best efforts to put the information together. I can believe that the theological truth they are conveying can happen without having to require absolute historical truth.

In the same way, I would say that I fully expect that Jesus' words may have been slightly different than what the gospel authors recorded. For example, I'm not of the belief that we have absolute literal transcriptions of what Jesus was saying. It's not as if they had audio recordings. But since they hung around Jesus, they probably heard him preach the same/similar sermons many, many times, and so they understood what the core ideas were. The specific words can be different without impacting the theological truths being presented.

And so this is the distinction between holding to theological truths and historical truths. The theological ideas and meanings are all truth. But this doesn't mean that every single statement also has a corresponding literal history that is hanging on it.

Thank you Aaron for your response to my question.
The infallible/inerrant "game" (interesting word choice on your part) is a vitally important "game" to me, and one that I would like to play in this thread. If you'd rather not participate in the "game", please let me know.

I believe that when theological truths are at least in part based on historical truths (which is the case over and over again in the Bible), it is unwise to put one over the other.

"Seems to be pretty clear"? How much clearer can it "seem" to get?

And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. 1 Corinthians 15:14(KJV)

If that isn't "clear" that Jesus' resurrection is an essential part of Christianity, then basically nothing in the Bible is "clear", so we should probably find something else to read.

The game-ness comes down to word-game-ness. Because there are so many different definitions that are brought to the table before-hand. If you ask a bunch of Christians to define "inerrant" and "infallible" in the context of the Bible, you'll get a bunch of different answers. And then when you engage further, you'll get a bunch of new different answers as they start either hedging or digging in, depending on who is talking.

So the "game" that I don't like to play is the one where we argue over the definition as if there's a single "right" definition and every other definition is "wrong." It's not an interesting conversation because you don't actually talk about something interesting. There are times to have arguments over definitions for the purposes of drawing clarity and precision, but this just isn't one of those situations.

In the context of reading and interpreting the Bible, I disagree. This is among the points that Augustine was making in his essay. There are things that the Bible is uniquely in position to teach us about. And there are things that the universe is uniquely in position to teach us about.

I would also say that those who are on the YEC side of the table *ARE* putting one over the other. They are putting the Bible over history. If all of the observations about the universe that I can make say that it's a pretty old place, then I will read the Bible with that as my context, rather than reading the Bible and concluding that the universe is a pretty young place, and then trying to figure out how to square up the observations of the oldness of the universe in a way that makes it appear young.

If you cannot conclude that the universe is young *except* by interpreting the Bible in a specific way, then you really are putting one over the other.

Okay, now I understand what you meant. I agree with what you said here.



I basically agree with this. I believe that there is so-called special revelation, which would be those things that the Bible teaches us. I also believe that there is natural revelation which are those things that science, for example, teaches us. It gets interesting when there is an apparent conflict between special and natural revelation. I say apparent, because since both types of revelation reveal God's truth, if there is conflict it is because of a lack of understanding on our part. I guess in a sense the "old earth" versus "young earth" debate is an attempt to resolve what is seen by some as conflicting revelation.

Full disclosure alert: If science seems to indicate that "x is true", and the Bible seems to indicate that "x is false", then I will hold that "x is false."

This is a common view.

Yes.

Yes. This confirms my claim that you do put one over the other.

And I would fully anticipate that this is your view. But you have yet to fully elaborate on the details of *why* you believe "x is false" in the context of your literalist reading of the Bible. So far, the only positive elaboration on your view that you've only put forth a part of sermon, which has been analyzed.

I will also note that "seems to indicate" is a very important phrasing. Because at this point, you're openly acknowledging that the error can be in your reading and interpretation of the Bible in addition to the interpretation of scientific data potentially being in error. Do you allow yourself to be agnostic between which of the two errors might be in effect in apparent contradictions?

My next post will will advance some arguments for a literal reading of Genesis.

Yes. There are literalists who reject YEC based on their interpretation of the text of Genesis.

I look forward to reading it when it's ready.

Are you personally agnostic between whether your interpretation of Genesis is in error or whether the commonly-held scientific understanding is in error?

And I will look forward to reading your critique.

At the moment, I believe it is more likely that my understanding of the Scriptures is correct and that the current scientific understanding is mistaken. Having said that, there are probably tens of millions of people who understand Scripture better than me and there are also tens of millions of people who understand science better than me, so it would be foolish of me to be dogmatic about the age of the Earth.

The answer to the second question is pretty obvious, no? "Because I deny reality".

Glad to be of assistance. Invoice is in the mail.