beyond the limitations of the writers

[rmwilliamsll]

what prompts this thread is

Second, the Scriptures are not limited to the human understanding of the writers. In order to demonstrate that point, God often included future prophecy as part of the message -- things beyond the understandings of the writers. The Scriptures contain knowledge and information beyond the limitations of the writers.

http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=31235548&postcount=24

This is an interesting idea, the first time i'd ever seen it was in this forum several months back. When i recognized what was happening, and what people were claiming i immediately called it "Scriptural scientific Easter eggs".

The full blown idea (i don't know if laptoppop means the full thing with this paragraph or not) is that God puts "easter eggs" into Scripture to scientifically validate Scripture in the future. So in the context of this original posting, God told the writers of Gen 1 that the world was neither flat nor the center of the solar system.

The idea is that only a omnipotent and omniscient God could have given the author's knowledge that was not generally available in their culture. This validates the religious and theological message since only God could be speaking. Essentially it is the idea that phasars are described somewhere in Isaiah and humanity just won't know it until our knowledge reaches that point.

The problem is what it poses for grammatical-historical hermeneutics. The big point of this principle is that the first hearers of the Scripture are it's intended target audience, not us, not Augustine, nor Calvin, but those to whom it was first written. But with scientific easter eggs, no one actually understands these things for years or even centuries to come.

This is very different from prophecy. Prophecy can be understood in every generation, only the exactly meaning changes as history progresses. But no one is really left out of the loop like scientific easter eggs propose. For the centuries before geocentricism was scientifically overturned got it all wrong. All interpretators until the targetted generation where wrong in their interpretation. not only that, it is science that corrects the interpretation, showing believers how really to interpret these verses.

it really is an odd idea.

 

[arunma]

You know, I've heard this logic used quite a bit in Muslim circles of their Quran. They're called "scientific miracles." And all of them are bunk. My favorite was the one posted on NCR about the Quranic prediction of the speed of light.

I'm confused as to why some Christians adopt this interpretation of the Bible. One would think that the primary topic of all Scripture is Jesus Christ and the Gospel of salvation. Compared with that, the scientific easter eggs seem pretty lame.

 

[laptoppop]

Actually, you are missing the point a bit here. I wasn't talking about technological easter eggs - but rather about historical predictions.

In the Old Testament, one could judge a prophet -- did his predictions come true? If not, he/she was not a valid prophet. But here is the key point -- when someone gave a historical prediction in the name of God, he/she was speaking using knowledge that went beyond their own.

In fact, its quite likely the prophet themselves did not always know exactly what was meant by what they said. Think of the messianic prophecies hundreds of years before Jesus - they would not necessarily have understood. Certainly it is doubtful they understood the need for a suffering/redeeming messiah before a ruling one.

This establishes an important point. The Scriptures are not just limited to the cosmological understanding of the authors. They are "God-breathed" -- able to express concepts and truths beyond the limitations of the people used to present them.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Actually, you are missing the point a bit here. I wasn't talking about technological easter eggs - but rather about historical predictions.

i wrote that i was uncertain if this was your meaning:
(i don't know if laptoppop means the full thing with this paragraph or not)

the problem is that you are using terms like:
The Scriptures are not just limited to the cosmological understanding of the authors. They are "God-breathed" -- able to express concepts and truths beyond the limitations of the people used to present them.
which clearly refer to the scientific cosmology that we have been discussing in this forum, for instance, flat earth, geocentric solar system etc.

these are not prophecies about historical events in the lives of people but rather scientific descriptions of how the world is, or better yet, how the world appears to us.

i believe that this is one of the problems with this viewpoint, it is confusing scientific descriptions of reality for historical and prophetic statements.

for instance, if i propose that there are windows in the sky and rain is the tears of my ancestors (it's a country song on now, about grandma's and a dead mother's tears) i can be making a metaphorical remark, as the author of this song is doing. Or i can be making a scientific argument that i believe that these things exist and are an accurate description of the world.

the issue is what exactly are the nature of these truths that are God-breathed(expired:in the meaning of the word breathed out) by God in the Scriptures? there is NO evidence that any of the authors of Scripture knows anything about the physical universe exceeding their contempories, but rather they are "victims" of the general proto-scientific naive realism that was overturned in the scientific revolutions our societies have been undergoing for about 500 years.

notes:
changed expired to God-breathed, not so funny pun in retrospect.

 

[artybloke]

In the Old Testament, one could judge a prophet -- did his predictions come true?

This is at best an oversimplification, and at worst a misrepresentation of the role of prophecy in the OT. The OT prophets (Isaiah, Micah, Amos etc...) were in the business of warning about consequences of the actions of the kings of Isreal and Judah, not about predicting the future.

Jonah warned that Ninevah would be destroyed if they didn't repent. They repented - and to his great disappointment, behold, they weren't destroyed.

There is very little direct prediction of the future in the OT prophets; but a lot of warning, a lot of condemnation of the sins of the nation (injustice, idolatry, unequal distribution of resources seemed to occupy their minds a lot.)

This establishes an important point. The Scriptures are not just limited to the cosmological understanding of the authors. They are "God-breathed" -- able to express concepts and truths beyond the limitations of the people used to present them.

This is no different from Shakespeare, from Dickens, from my own poetry - there are always layers of meaning in any text that go beyond the understanding of the original writers. I know that, because people who read my poems have told me things about them that I didn't know were there.

But that's a very different thing from reading into an ancient writing the kind of scientific understanding that no ancient writer could possibly have understood. That's what we call "eisegesis". It's also a kind of magical thinking: conjuring something from a text that isn't there.