Evolution, Science, Creation

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Sorry for the long delay, life is a bit hectic just now.

The Battle of Agincourt was fought on 25 October 1415, (Saint Crispin's Day), in northern France as part of the Hundred Years' War. The combatants were the English army of King Henry V (traditionally thought to be highly outnumbered, though this is now disputed, see below),

Point 1: you should provide references when you quote others.

Point 2: And how do you know this? You read it at wikipedia? How many eye witness accounts do we have? Of those how many were experienced in military matters? Were there any eyewitness accounts by people who were sympathetic to the French King?

(no, these are not random questions)

This is recent history. You are talking extremely ancient history. One is easier than the other.

And yet creationists seem to think we should have a complete and perfect understanding of all that history.

 

[MyChristianForumID]

You should provide references when you quote others.

And how do you know this? You read it at wikipedia? How many eye witness accounts do we have? Of those how many were experienced in military matters? Were there any eyewitness accounts by people who were sympathetic to the French King?

(no, these are not random questions)

I got it the first time. No need to repeat yourself.

And yet creationists seem to think we should have a complete and perfect understanding of all that history.

I am not sure what those creationists out there think, but I doubt they do. They just want to know why put faith in evolution theory when the bible is as plain as can be.

 

[Dannager]

I am not sure what those creationists out there think, but I doubt they do. They just want to know why put faith in evolution theory when the bible is as plain as can be.

Because the Bible isn't a history textbook - it's a moral guide.

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

I got it the first time.

That wasn't clear from your response.

but I doubt they do.

They certainly behave as if anything they perceive as imperfect is a sign that evolution is fatally flawed.

They just want to know why put faith in evolution theory when the bible is as plain as can be.

Who is putting religious faith in evolution?
Nobody I see around here.

I note that the Bible is also plain as can be that the Sun revolves around the Earth and that God decides where the rain will fall.

Should we therefore stop teaching heliocentric astronomy and ignore meteorologists?

 

[vossler]

Because the Bible isn't a history textbook - it's a moral guide.

The Bible isn't a history book? Well, that explains a lot!

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

The Bible isn't a history book? Well, that explains a lot!

Agreed, though I don't see how anybody could mistake Revelation or Proverbs or Psalms as parts of a history textbook.

Job is an interesting book to consider, did God allow the being identified as Satan to kill off Job's family and physically torture Job to make a point? Does the factualness of the book of Job have a bearing on how we interpret it?

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

David Cooper: "When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense;therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, literal meaning, unless the facts of the context indicate clearly otherwise."

But what are the facts of the context and who determines them?

 

[vossler]

But what are the facts of the context and who determines them?

Thanks for asking!

Here is a quote and I'm sorry that I can't properly cite its source, but it describes my feelings to a tee.


"Thus, literal interpretation takes every word at its normal, ordinary, customary meaning. The literal method is to be identified with the grammatical-historical method because it employs a study of the grammar and the historical context. It is safe to say that to the extent that one follows Dr. Cooper’s rule, to that extent he will be biblical, and to the extent that one strays from the rule, to that extent he will be unbiblical. The literal approach should not be confused with wooden literalism which takes every word in a strictly wooden sense allowing no room for symbolism or figures of speech. The literal principle considers symbols and figures of speech to be normal parts of every language. Symbols and figures of speech are powerful communication devices that tap into the mental imagination of the reader. Yet, even when employed, they are done so with the intent of communicating literal ideas. Nor should literalism be thought of as unspiritual. Clearly, language employed by God to communicate His message to mankind cannot be called “unspiritual”, for God Himself is Spirit."


If that is 'deep' enough here's a link to a statement on hermeneutics that consists of twenty-five articles. Articles 7, 9, 15, 19, 20, 21 and especially 22 specifically address your questions. The statement is quite lengthly, but as you can guess, very detailed and leaves nothing to the imagination.

Enjoy!

 

[Robert the Pilegrim]

Thanks for asking!

Here is a quote and I'm sorry that I can't properly cite its source, but it describes my feelings to a tee.

snip

If that is 'deep' enough here's a link to a statement on hermeneutics that consists of twenty-five articles. Articles 7, 9, 15, 19, 20, 21 and especially 22 specifically address your questions. The statement is quite lengthly, but as you can guess, very detailed and leaves nothing to the imagination.

Enjoy!

Thank you for teh reference, I will try to have a look in the relatively near future.

In the meantime perhaps you could elucidate a point or three for me, if I write to a friend
"Just as Othello, you pay too much attention to malicious gossips"
and much later somebody reads that how is that person to determine whether or not I believe Othello was a real person?

How do I determine whether or not God is a geocentrist? Joshua 10 is a historical book and while there is poetry involved there is also a plain statement.

When God states that he makes the rain to fall on the just and the evil does that mean we should ignore meteorology? or that he consciously enforces the physics involved? or that he set the laws in place at the beginning? or perhaps the statement was not meant as a statement about science at all?

 

[vossler]

Thank you for teh reference, I will try to have a look in the relatively near future.

In the meantime perhaps you could elucidate a point or three for me, if I write to a friend
"Just as Othello, you pay too much attention to malicious gossips"
and much later somebody reads that how is that person to determine whether or not I believe Othello was a real person?

How do I determine whether or not God is a geocentrist? Joshua 10 is a historical book and while there is poetry involved there is also a plain statement.

When God states that he makes the rain to fall on the just and the evil does that mean we should ignore meteorology? or that he consciously enforces the physics involved? or that he set the laws in place at the beginning? or perhaps the statement was not meant as a statement about science at all?

Robert, this would be difficult to answer. I don't know much about the Othello of which you speak; I have no context to put him in. Is this the Othello of Shakespearean play or another? Having not read Othello or know of an Othello it would be difficult to say. Without any sort of context it would be nearly impossible to comment.

All Scripture, from where I stand, requires at least one element to understanding, a contextual picture in order to make an educated and spirit led assessment. Without it I would be floundering and ineffective.


As for God being a geocentrist, well, I'm not in a position to comment. I haven't studied the Scriptures, with regard to that, adequately to render an opinion. It never has been something that pricked my interest much.

 

[gluadys]

Thanks for asking!

Here is a quote and I'm sorry that I can't properly cite its source, but it describes my feelings to a tee.


"Thus, literal interpretation takes every word at its normal, ordinary, customary meaning.

Whose normal, ordinary, customary meaning?

Consider the line from "Yankee Doodle" that goes...


"..stuck a feather in cap and called it 'macaroni'.

What is the normal, ordinary, customary meaning of 'macaroni'?

 

[vossler]

Whose normal, ordinary, customary meaning?

Consider the line from "Yankee Doodle" that goes...

"..stuck a feather in cap and called it 'macaroni'.

What is the normal, ordinary, customary meaning of 'macaroni'?

Obviously, Anyone reading that sentence today would at first think of the pasta, the other meaning for the word has little or no use today. So someone reading it today as it is written would immediately not understand its meaning. This would then require them to go back and figure out its meaning, considering the context of the day.

How does this apply to Genesis? No reading it in the normal, ordinary, customary way would ask themselves what does day mean?

 

[The Lady Kate]

Obviously, Anyone reading that sentence today would at first think of the pasta, the other meaning for the word has little or no use today. So someone reading it today as it is written would immediately not understand its meaning. This would then require them to go back and figure out its meaning, considering the context of the day.

How does this apply to Genesis? No reading it in the normal, ordinary, customary way would ask themselves what does day mean?

So... consider the context of Genesis...

 

[gluadys]

Obviously, Anyone reading that sentence today would at first think of the pasta, the other meaning for the word has little or no use today. So someone reading it today as it is written would immediately not understand its meaning. This would then require them to go back and figure out its meaning, considering the context of the day.

How does this apply to Genesis? No reading it in the normal, ordinary, customary way would ask themselves what does day mean?

Well, the first point is made. Today's meaning of a word is not necessarily what it meant 200 years ago, never mind 2500 years ago.

So the answer to "whose meaning" is "the author's meaning" not the reader's meaning.

The other aspect of this is that it is not simply a matter of figuring out the meaning of the words or even taking account of the verbal context of words and phrases within the text.

An author writes out of whole world-view that can be extremely different from a current world-view. And that has implications for how a text is read.

Consider Paul's letter to the Romans where he speaks of sin and death entering the world through "one man".

To a modern reader it seems as if the normal, ordinary meaning of "one man" is "one individual male person". But Paul was writing from a world-view of 1st-century Judaism and Hellenic civilization in which the philosophy of neo-Platonism was a significant shaping force of thought. Judaism in the 1st century was distinct from Greek thought, but it had been absorbing and adapting to Hellenism for two centuries.

In this system of thought "one man" could very easily refer to the "one eternal form of man" which is found in each and every individual. It could refer, as it were, to the template of humanity which, when applied to physical material, makes it human.

What Paul could be saying is something along this line:

We have all been made from one template, the Adam template of humanity, and through this one template sin and death has entered the world. But now God has given us a new template of humanity, namely Christ....​

To us, this is a strange non-normal way of thinking. But it the context of a world-view dominated by Platonic thinking, it would be just as normal as "one male individual".

 

[vossler]

Consider Paul's letter to the Romans where he speaks of sin and death entering the world through "one man".

To a modern reader it seems as if the normal, ordinary meaning of "one man" is "one individual male person". But Paul was writing from a world-view of 1st-century Judaism and Hellenic civilization in which the philosophy of neo-Platonism was a significant shaping force of thought. Judaism in the 1st century was distinct from Greek thought, but it had been absorbing and adapting to Hellenism for two centuries.

In this system of thought "one man" could very easily refer to the "one eternal form of man" which is found in each and every individual. It could refer, as it were, to the template of humanity which, when applied to physical material, makes it human.

What Paul could be saying is something along this line:

We have all been made from one template, the Adam template of humanity, and through this one template sin and death has entered the world. But now God has given us a new template of humanity, namely Christ....​

To us, this is a strange non-normal way of thinking. But it the context of a world-view dominated by Platonic thinking, it would be just as normal as "one male individual".

Gluadys, help me out here, I'm not nearly as educated or experienced as you are. After reading your post, especially the part about what Paul could be saying, I don't understand or see the meaning of the passage, at least if it's the passage I'm thinking of in Romans 5, changing any. It would have been helpful if you had given a Scriptural citation in order to help me properly and adequately understand, although I'm not necessarily sure how successful it would have been.

 

[gluadys]

Gluadys, help me out here, I'm not nearly as educated or experienced as you are. After reading your post, especially the part about what Paul could be saying, I don't understand or see the meaning of the passage, at least if it's the passage I'm thinking of in Romans 5, changing any. It would have been helpful if you had given a Scriptural citation in order to help me properly and adequately understand, although I'm not necessarily sure how successful it would have been.

Indeed, theologically, the meaning does not change. Yes, Romans 5 is the passage I was referring to.

Paul even refers in this passage to Adam being a type of the one to come--which to me signals again that he is not referring to Adam as a literal individual, but more along the line of a Platonic form.

Plato's basic idea is that this world is a world of imperfect shadows of things mirroring a perfect and eternal world. In the perfect world there is one perfect form or idea of each thing. (In Christian terminology, you might think of the forms as the idea of what each thing should be that exists in the mind -aka Logos--of God.) There are not hundreds of owls in the perfect world--just one--the one perfect idea of an owl. Same for oak trees, stars and people. In the world of forms, there is one perfect idea of each. In this world many individual and less than perfect shadows of the one form. And each of these shadows is what it is because it participants in some way in the one perfect form.

So in this world today, there are 6 billion imperfect shadows of the one perfect human (Adam) which has existed from eternity in the mind of God. And something of Adam is in each one of them--for that is what makes them human. But it is still one Adam--one man.

Similarly, there is one Christ--the new man. But Christians are to participate in the being of Christ, just as they formerly participated in Adam. So there are many little 'Christs' (for that is what a Christian is called to be) each manifesting the one Christ imperfectly--and the one Christ who lives in all of them.

 

[vossler]

O.K. thanks gluadys, I think I understand your position, although I must admit you do think about these things on a level that my elevator doesn't reach.

 

[gluadys]

O.K. thanks gluadys, I think I understand your position, although I must admit you do think about these things on a level that my elevator doesn't reach.

One caveat. Just because I describe a position doesn't mean I hold to it. I don't think Plato and his followers were right.

I do think an educated person like Paul, writing in the first century to mostly Greek or Greek-dominated cultures would have used the idiomatic concepts of his day.

And a modern interpreter of Paul's writings has to take that into account when deciding what the "normal meaning" of Paul's writing is.

 

[vossler]

I do think an educated person like Paul, writing in the first century to mostly Greek or Greek-dominated cultures would have used the idiomatic concepts of his day.

And a modern interpreter of Paul's writings has to take that into account when deciding what the "normal meaning" of Paul's writing is.

Wouldn't this be complicating Scripture for the typical reader more than it already is?

 

[gluadys]

Wouldn't this be complicating Scripture for the typical reader more than it already is?

The point is that it would be relatively simple for the reader of Paul's time. Of course, there is plenty of stuff Paul wrote that cannot be called simple for any reader in any generation. As Paul himself tells us, the gospel is meat as well as milk. And some of that meat is a tough chew.

There is no requirement that scripture be simple to understand. And there is no requirement that what is plain for the first intended audience be equally plain to an audience 2-3 thousand years later.

Some of the basics are simple. It is hard to not understand Jesus' parable of the Good Shepherd for example. But there is a lot that needs to be studied. The parable of the Good Samaritan, for example, cannot be understood in full apart from understanding the attitude of first century Jews toward Samaritans.

So in every generation there are parts of the scripture that are not easy to understand. And in our generation we do have the added complication of having to figure out the differences in culture and world-view that separate the thinking of the biblical writers from that of the typical American reader of today.

One can get from a simple reading of scripture the basic message of the gospel (e.g. John 3:16) that is sufficient for salvation. But that doesn't mean that all of scripture is so easily understood.