Book recommendations

[shernren]

I'm just going to pick the points I can say something meaningful about; gluadys and Assyrian have been doing splendidly on this thread.

I actually think that this is one of the more convincing YEC arguments. The fact that the author of Genesis used the expression morning and evening points to a literal understanding of the word "day." I can also see, however, that, if the story is allegorical, then it would make sense that the author would use language consistent with the rest of the story.

So, I guess I see this argument pointing to the credibility of YEC over OEC viewpoints, but not necessarily over TE (as TEs are more willing to accept that the whole story is allegory, and so there is no need "interpret" it from a scientific or historical perspective).

I would think anyone reading the passage closely should instantly see that something funny is going on with evening and morning. Why are the terms "evening" and "morning" being used during the first three "days"? One can hardly have an objective definition of "evening" or "morning" without a sun or a well-defined sense of planetary rotation.

Or suppose that five hundred years from now there are fundamentalists colonizing Mercury reading Genesis 1 who have long since forgotten Earth - will our Young Mercury Creationist friends insist on the literal truth that the universe was created in 6 1440-hour periods and that anyone suggesting anything else is being unfair to the truth of the Bible?

Indeed, this is hardly just a scientific issue; the text itself states that the lights in the expanse of the heavens were for separating the day from the night, and for days and for years (1:14). Okay, so what was going on with the separations before those things were created? If I say I bought a watch to keep time, doesn't that imply that I couldn't keep time before I bought that watch? And wouldn't it be absurd for me to say "Three hours and fifteen minutes before I bought my first watch, I was playing golf" - how could I have known?

Personally I've also found the order of events in Genesis 1 intriguing, ever since it was pointed out in a book by John Collins (a conservative commentator). Okay, so on the first day God creates Day and Night and then:

there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
[Gen 1:5 ESV]

Notice it doesn't say "there was nighttime and there was daytime" (for there are different Hebrew words for those); the evening is when the sun sets and the morning is when the sun rises. Now the period between sunset and sunrise is hardly a day! The "first day", therefore, must be referring to all of Gen 1:3-5 and not just to "there was evening and there was morning".

This alone knocks down the creationist argument that "evening and morning always refer to a literal day" - evening and morning can't possibly refer to a literal day! [And it's evening, then morning: not the other way around. Word order is also inspired according to our creationist friends!] But what's the pattern of work we see here? God does His creative stuff. And then there is evening. And then there is morning. Okay kids, Day 1 is over, what does God do on Day 2? Look, He makes sky, and sea! And then there is evening. And then there is morning. Okay kids, Day 2 is over ...

This sounds very homey and it should be: it's exactly how we work. We work during the day, evening comes, we go home to rest, morning comes, we start a new day. (The Hebrews did sometimes count a "day" from dusk to dusk, but they weren't always consistent about it.) But we know from Scripture (and theology) that God should not need to sleep, God should not need to rest! And indeed we are not told explicitly that He rests, though it is implied in the order of presentation. So what's the deal here?

John Collins calls this a presentation of God's creation in analogy to a workman going about a week of work, who takes breaks at night and then rests in contentment on the last day. Personally I think he's just trying to say "non-literal" without offending his more conservative colleagues (and justifiably so!) but hey, I'll take any support I can get.

Can you expound on this point a bit more? According to a TE view of history, who was Adam? Was he the first "specimen" of evolutionary process to be recognizable as human? Was he the first living being that God felt was worthy of a soul? This is probably my biggest stumbling block in fully embracing TE.

The other concern that I have with Adam is the writings of Paul that say that "one man" (or Adam) brought death into the world. But, according to a TE worldview. Animals were dying for millions of years before Adam and Even sinned. I would be interested in your perspectives on how to reconcile this with a TE viewpoint.

I recently did a formal debate with Mark about that here, you might want to follow it and see if it clarifies your doubts about TE handling of original sin.

You will find a diversity of views among TEs, in part because there is a diversity of views even among more conservative people. Firstly, to me animal death isn't an issue. Partly because it is hard to assign ethical value to the death of an animal (or else I would be a vegetarian - and I've suggested in the past that it is inconsistent for creationists to on the one hand decry animal death as a consequence of the Fall and on the other hand actively and voluntarily cause animal death!); but I think more subtly, it doesn't cease to be a problem for creationists.

For the creationists the question is more pointed: "How can we know, and why should it be, that animal death is a consequence of the Fall?" The first part comments on the fact that animal death is not something the Bible talks about. It is certainly not represented in the curses of Genesis 3 (and you would think that God would warn Adam "By the way, the lions aren't friendly any more" or something), and the Bible seems to represent animal death as a function of God's providence without explicitly referring to the Fall. Indeed, at points in the Bible even human death is treated as benign or even benevolent: the euphemisms for "death" used in the Old Testament are very mild, and consider 1 Kings 14:13.

The point is that creationism doesn't make theodicy go away. It may shift theodicy around, it may make it appear more palatable or throw a slight layer of explicability on it, but in the final analysis it can't solve theodicy. No human theory can. Not even the Scriptures can (for our Lord cried that the cup should be taken away from Him if it could be, and He certainly knew the Scriptures). No, theodicy will only be solved in the limit of the eschaton, when the full revelation of Jesus glorified will explain all of history, and the world will be made anew and drawn up into Jesus to be subjected to the Father. Any attempt to explain away theodicy before that is nothing less than gnosticism.

As for Adam. Adam! You'll hear differently from different TEs but to me Adam is, first and foremost, a primeval representative of the human race who sinned against God. He was one of the first humans whom God entered into relationship with; God gave him the chance to obey or rebel, and he blew it. How, where or when is irrelevant; the fact is that it happened.

What about biological descent? Well, I covered that more fully in my debate with mark. Briefly I think there are two (complementary) views of original sin which comport nicely with my evolutionary view of Adam. One is the tried and tested view of federal headship; the other is the image of the "web" or "river" of sin, which appears to have cropped up in fits and bursts throughout theological history without really ever becoming a mainstream view. (This is likely because thinkers greater than me have found ample reasons to reject it, reasons which are so deep as to not be obvious to my shallow and uneducated mind.)

Federal headship is the idea that Adam was our complete representative. When (I assume) you voted for President Obama, you did so (partly) because you believed he would be a good representative for you: he promised to raise science funding, and you would have done the same in his position (I hope! ); he would have instigated a quick pull-out from the war in Iraq, and you would have done the same in his position, etc. On the contrary, you did not vote for candidate John McCain because you did not think he would represent you well: he does and says things which you would never do if you were in his position. Well, Adam was made our representative in the first test of obedience (and if we complain, who can say that any of us would have done any better?) and as he failed, so were we dragged down along with him. If President Obama makes a terrible mistake it will reflect poorly on all the Americans who decided that he should be their representative; similarly, Adam's mistake doomed all of us who were represented in him.

The "river" or "web" of sin is the idea that since all the actions of humanity are deeply interconnected, one man's sin can spread to all, even unwittingly. Consider cholera outbreaks in a city. Of course it can all (theoretically) be traced back to one single person who discharged his feces into one single input point in the water system, which spread via well-defined routes to other people. In reality cholera becomes an outbreak precisely when the germs have spread throughout the entire water supply so that you cannot even tell where it all began any more.

In the same way, Adam was the headspring of a river of sin from which all humanity up to now and beyond have not been able to extricate themselves; and sin has spread so wide and deep that it hardly matters any more who or where they were or what they did, although as a fact of logic there simply must have been a first sin. Sin begets sin. Adam and Eve, being sinners, would have brought up their children in sin; if they had neighbours and relatives, they would have taught their neighbours and relatives to sin in their various dealings with them by sinning themselves. Why can't we extricate ourselves? Because society itself is irretrievably infected with sin. My church back in Malaysia had corruption involved in the process of building: the local authorities had a list of approved engineers, and all the engineers would not work on our building without a stipend that they called "protection fees" - an euphemism for money paid to the local gangs to avoid being harassed. Did my church sin? Or was it the local authorities? Or the engineers? Or the gangs? I think we all sinned. And so my sin is both Adam's (because the great river of sin in which I stand started with him) and mine (because I stand in that river too, and cannot free myself).

I deliberately said nothing about being descendants of Adam in those two explanations; I think it is fairly obvious that taking those views (when combined, the result is fairly orthodox - it does everything a doctrine of original sin needs to do) does not entail saying one thing or another about Adam's place in biology. A young-earth creationist could believe in the "river of sin" as much as a diehard TE. Anyhow, that's what I believe. I think it's the most responsible way to deal with passages like Romans 5; in my debate I showed that this view also makes sense of numerous passages of Scripture where collective consequences follow from individual sin, of which humanity's sin in Adam is really just one instance.

 

[champuru]

I'm like you, I can't accept nor reject either side of the argument for or against. The Case for Faith be Lee Strobel is the only book I can think of. It has a chapter against evolution.

 

[vossler]

Obviously, there is no passage of Scripture that says anything specifically about TE. The argument for TE is based on inferences about what the Bible says (and does not say) about Creation.

By the same token, there is no passage of Scripture that explains the Trinity, but I believe in it, nonetheless, because it can be inferred from passages that speak of each of the three persons therein.

Given that you said there was a purely biblical perspective of TE I was really interested in seeing it. Now that I see there isn't one I'm back to square one. If, as you say, the argument for TE is based on inferences about what the Bible says it would be helpful to know exactly what verses provide those inferences and how your hermeneutics were developed.

Yes it's true there is no passage in the Bible that explains the Trinity, but there certainly are plenty of examples of it. The difference here is there are no examples or anything else in Scripture that eludes to evolution.

As a Christian who wants to be able to share and protect my faith, I feel as though I need to know whether evolution is something to be disproved to maintain the credibility of Scripture or if Scripture is reconcilable to evolution. If the biblical account is historical, then the former is true. If it is allegorical, then the latter is true. As I have explained, I see strong arguments for both sides, and I am looking for guidance in sorting these out, preferably from people who have a firm understanding of both Scripture and Science.

I'm sad to see you are troubled by something that really is quite clear once you remove man from the equation. Tell me this, give me biblical support of how God could, in anyway, hold it against you because you believed the plain and simple understanding of Genesis. Then reverse the perspective. Tell me what do you see?

 

[vossler]

It is conjecture and speculation. It is a hermeneutic telling you how to interpret scripture that has no foundation in scripture.

Let me make sure I'm understanding you correctly. It is your belief that someone who reads Scripture and follows the hermeneutic that when the plain meaning of the words is followed, unless clearly shown otherwise, they are using conjecture and speculation. Is this what you believe?

 

[mark kennedy]

Let me make sure I'm understanding you correctly. It is your belief that someone who reads Scripture and follows the hermeneutic that when the plain meaning of the words is followed, unless clearly shown otherwise, they are using conjecture and speculation. Is this what you believe?

I've studied it through at least a dozen times, there is no hermeneutic other then a regular day. Notice he simply calls it conjecture, speculation and without Scriptural support yet he does not use the Scriptures or Biblical scholarship to support his statement. The statement just hangs in the air without an ounce of credible scholarship backing it.

Using evening and morning together means a regular 24 hour day

"And Moses said, this shall be when the Lord shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full." (Exodus 16:8)

"and the people stood by Moses from the morning until the evening." (Exodus 18:13)​

When it says 7 days it means a regular 7 day week:

"six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day." (Exodus 20:11)​

A text without a context is a pretext and the context of the use of 'yom' in Genesis 1 is clearly a regular 24 hour day. The use of the language and the context indicate that Genesis is both literal in it's meaning and historical in it's content. Another interesting literary feature that is rich in meaning and could offer some insights as to how the earth and the universe would appear to be so old. There are not 7 days described in the Genesis account of creation but eight. The first day mentioned is the initial creation:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

"in the day when the LORD God (יְהוָה אֱלֹהִי&#1501 made the earth and the heavens." (Genesis 2:4)​

Following that initial creation is an undetermined period of time which is probably why the term day is not applied to it in Genesis 1:1. The original creation left the earth void and without form and covered in darkness, the reducing atmosphere that so many scientists have concluded marked earth's early condition.

There are times things can be taken too literally like the sun standing still in Joshua, I don't think it means the sun stood still as much as the light was prolonged. I also think that passages in Song of Songs are taken far to figuratively like the descriptions of the garden thought to be allusions to intimacy when the passage is indicating a literal garden.

The point is simply this, if the intention was to expond upon the Scriptures rather then conflate them and contradict creationists the approach would be Scriptural. The truth is that in Liberal Theology I don't think they even take God literally and I have lingering doubts about some TEs as well.

Grace and peace,
Mark

 

[shernren]

I've studied it through at least a dozen times, there is no hermeneutic other then a regular day. Notice he simply calls it conjecture, speculation and without Scriptural support yet he does not use the Scriptures or Biblical scholarship to support his statement. The statement just hangs in the air without an ounce of credible scholarship backing it.

Of course not, when has credible scholarship ever contradicted the glorious and venerable mark kennedy?

Doubtless you will condemn John Collins as yet another liberal hack. So be it. Quoting verbatim from his commentary on Genesis 1-4, which has received praise from no less than J.I. Packer:

Finally, the structure of the account shows us that our author has presented God as if he were a craftsman going about his workweek. This comes out from the structure of the account, the six workdays followed by a Sabbath. It also comes out from the refrain, "and there was evening, and there was morning, the nth day." The order of the items mentioned is crucial: it is evening followed by morning. This means that any effort to find this as defining the days runs counter to the author's own presentation. Evening and morning bracket the night, and this is the daily time of rest for the worker. In Psalm 104:23, when the sun rises, "man goes out to his work, and to his labor until the evening." The seventh day speaks of "his work that he had done," using terms applied to a human worker.

...

We have also discussed the refrain: its effect is to present God as a workman going through his workweek, taking his daily rest (the night between the evening and the morning) and enjoying his Sabbath "rest." To speak this way is to speak analogically about God's activity; that is, we understand what he did by analogy with what we do; and in turn, that analogy provides guidance for man in the proper way to carry out his own work and rest.

The analogy cautions us against applying strict literalism to the passage. I also indicated in the previous chapter that a good interpretation must account for the absence of the refrain on the seventh day. What does God rest from? It must be from his work of furnishing the earth to be a place for mankind to live, love, and worship: he "enjoys" the product of that workweek, which is finished. In other words, this Sabbath rest continues into the present, a notion that underlies John 5:17 and Hebrews 4:3-11.

It follows that this day lacks the refrain because it has no end - it is not an ordinary day by any stretch of the imagination, and this makes us question whether the other days are supposed to be ordinary in their length. Their length makes little difference to the account, which is based on analogy rather than identity between God's work and man's.

- C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4 [emphases in original]
​

 

[sfs]

Let me make sure I'm understanding you correctly. It is your belief that someone who reads Scripture and follows the hermeneutic that when the plain meaning of the words is followed, unless clearly shown otherwise, they are using conjecture and speculation. Is this what you believe?

I don't know if he believes that, but I certainly do. What is the "plain meaning" to you is unlikely to be so to someone else with a different background in reading literature, and almost certainly differs from what the "plain meaning" would have been to someone who lived, say, 1800 years ago. In other words, what you think the plain meaning is depends very much on your culture and your personal background.

 

[sfs]

Of course not, when has credible scholarship ever contradicted the glorious and venerable mark kennedy?

Doubtless you will condemn John Collins as yet another liberal hack. So be it.

You could also cite Henri Blocher, and in particular his In the Begninning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis, in support of a non-literal meaning to the days of creation. Blocher is (or at least was) a highly conservative theologian at Wheaton College.

 

[Assyrian]

Let me make sure I'm understanding you correctly. It is your belief that someone who reads Scripture and follows the hermeneutic that when the plain meaning of the words is followed, unless clearly shown otherwise, they are using conjecture and speculation. Is this what you believe?

It is the case, unless you can come up with basis for your hermeneutic. I know of nothing in scripture that supports it. It is based on human conjecture and speculation about how God thinks, more conjecture about how he speaks to us, and speculation about how we should best interpret his word. You end up with a completely unscriptural view that a mechanistic hermeneutic is the best way to understand what God really meant.

It isn't a question of whether I believe this is a speculative and conjectural hermeneutic or not. It is up to you to show there is a non speculative and conjectural basis for it. If you want to set your interpretation of scripture against science and dismiss modern science as conjecture and speculation, you had better make sure your interpretation isn't based on conjecture and speculation itself.

Given that you said there was a purely biblical perspective of TE I was really interested in seeing it. Now that I see there isn't one I'm back to square one. If, as you say, the argument for TE is based on inferences about what the Bible says it would be helpful to know exactly what verses provide those inferences and how your hermeneutics were developed.

I have been wanting to get back to you on that. The TE hermeneutic is one that goes all the way back to the church fathers and has come down to us through people like Calvin. It is a hermeneutic that has served the church well through the centuries keeping it from the literalism of early church flat earthers and shown the way when science contradicted the literal interpretation of the geocentric passage that had been held throughout church history until then.

If the problem with Cooper's literalist hermeneutic is that it is speculative conjecture, Augustine's approach is based on the fact our interpretations are speculative. Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 1Cor 2:11 So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Paul goes on to say we have the Spirit that we might know the things God gave us. But even with the Holy Spirit to guide us, we still only know in part 1Cor 13:9 and see a dim image in a mirror v12.

So, God's ways and thoughts are far higher than ours and our understanding dim and limited, as a result there are many different interpretations of scripture, and there are even more if we look though history. What is more they can't all be right. For Augustine, that meant if something is established by sound reason and science, and it contradicts your interpretation of scripture, then that was never what scripture actually meant. In fact even if science agrees with your interpretation, it is still quite possible it is not actually what scripture is talking about. When Copernicus came along, the church had to go back to the drawing board and find a completely new way of understanding the geocentric passage that had never occurred to people before. It had never crossed people's minds before that these verses should not be take at face value.

His other point is that God leads us and teaches us as a mother explains things to a child in baby talk. One of the YEC arguments about Genesis is that it is the simple meaning even a child will understand, but while the bible is very keen on a childlike faith, we are called to go beyond a childlike understanding. Children are fed milk but we are called to a mature understanding, to solid meat. It is fine thinking and speaking as a child when you are a child. When you are a grown man you give up childish things 1Cor 13:11. The Lord's understanding is unsearchable Isaiah 40:28 and yet he will gather the lambs in his arms v11. We think we understand the ways of God but really he is just carrying us in his arms and our intellectual understanding is just baby food. Calvin faced with astronomical discoveries that Jupiter and Saturn are much larger than the moon, explains Gen 1:16 And God made the two great lights, as God speaking to the Israelites in the simple terms they could understand “In Scripture, God speaks us as a nursemaid speaks baby-talk to children” (Institutes 1.13.1) Over the following century or so, the church used the same understanding with the discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler. When the bible talks of the sun hurrying around the earth, or halting in the sky when Joshua commanded it, it is speaking in simple terms people could understand, in baby talk.

 

[vossler]

It is the case, unless you can come up with basis for your hermeneutic. I know of nothing in scripture that supports it. It is based on human conjecture and speculation about how God thinks, more conjecture about how he speaks to us, and speculation about how we should best interpret his word. You end up with a completely unscriptural view that a mechanistic hermeneutic is the best way to understand what God really meant.

It isn't a question of whether I believe this is a speculative and conjectural hermeneutic or not. It is up to you to show there is a non speculative and conjectural basis for it. If you want to set your interpretation of scripture against science and dismiss modern science as conjecture and speculation, you had better make sure your interpretation isn't based on conjecture and speculation itself.

We really have little to talk about then. What you’re espousing is that for anyone to take the words in the Bible and believe them, as written, to be true they are using conjecture and speculation on how God thinks to formulate their understanding. The power of the words themselves now have become handicapped by man and his need for “understanding.” Essentially the Bible now is impotent because the words don’t mean what they say, it is now open to individual interpretation. This then allows for the wild interpretative processes that somehow meld evolution into the text because extra-biblical ‘evidence’ can now be used to embellish Scripture to the point where meaning is whatever one chooses it to be. I’m sorry but this is something I would expect to read from an atheist, certainly not a professing Christian.

You claim this isn’t a question about whether you believe this to be a bad hermeneutic or not but that when someone does read and interpret the words as written they must first show how it isn’t based upon speculation or conjecture. In other words, the plain meaning doesn’t exist because it hasn’t been justified by man. In effect you have now pitted the Words of God against the words of men by stating that any interpretation of Scripture that relies upon the plain meaning must be justified if it is to conflict with the ‘scientific’ findings of men.

1 Corinthians 1:18-21 states:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
​

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."​

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
​

According to you my interpretation of the Bible, because it is based upon the personal conjecture and speculation of how I read it and because I haven’t provided any man derived ‘wisdom’ to support it, renders the plain meaning of these words impotent. They, and any other text, must be first subject to be ‘filtered’ through some sort of man-derived process in order to be effective, so I'll let them stand up to your own filtration method which doesn't rely upon conjecture and speculation.

His other point is that God leads us and teaches us as a mother explains things to a child in baby talk. One of the YEC arguments about Genesis is that it is the simple meaning even a child will understand, but while the bible is very keen on a childlike faith, we are called to go beyond a childlike understanding. Children are fed milk but we are called to a mature understanding, to solid meat. It is fine thinking and speaking as a child when you are a child. When you are a grown man you give up childish things 1Cor 13:11. The Lord's understanding is unsearchable Isaiah 40:28 and yet he will gather the lambs in his arms v11. We think we understand the ways of God but really he is just carrying us in his arms and our intellectual understanding is just baby food. Calvin faced with astronomical discoveries that Jupiter and Saturn are much larger than the moon, explains Gen 1:16 And God made the two great lights, as God speaking to the Israelites in the simple terms they could understand “In Scripture, God speaks us as a nursemaid speaks baby-talk to children” (Institutes 1.13.1) Over the following century or so, the church used the same understanding with the discoveries of Copernicus and Kepler. When the bible talks of the sun hurrying around the earth, or halting in the sky when Joshua commanded it, it is speaking in simple terms people could understand, in baby talk.

[FONT=&quot]In short, this childlike faith of which you speak we are called to maturity from, applies to how we see the science of Creation. We need the solid meat that ‘science’ provides in order to understand the ‘baby talk’ that Scripture says. See I always thought the maturity that 1 Corinthians 3 was referring to was spiritual and not worldly, but then again my interpretation is based on conjecture and speculation, not science.
[/FONT]

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
​

 

[Assyrian]

I've studied it through at least a dozen times, there is no hermeneutic other then a regular day.

You mean no interpretation other than a literal day? I wasn't discussing the meaning of the Genesis days with Vossler, but the question of how we find that meaning of scripture and the hermeneutic rule Vossler has in his sig that tells him how he is to interpret scripture.

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."

Would that be the same sort of hermeneutic you use yourself Mark?

Notice he simply calls it conjecture, speculation and without Scriptural support yet he does not use the Scriptures or Biblical scholarship to support his statement. The statement just hangs in the air without an ounce of credible scholarship backing it.

I wonder how you use use scripture to say a hermeneutic has no scriptural support? Perhaps I should say:

There is no basis for Vossler's hermeneutic (Gen1:1 - Rev 22:21)
​

It's not there. My point is that it isn't in there. Basically, it is a challenge to Vossler to provide a scriptural basis to David Cooper's rule, but in all my discussions with Vossler this is something he has never been able to do. Conjecture and speculation are Vosslers terms. He uses them to justify dismissing science in favour of his interpretation of scripture. I picked them up because they are really quite a good description of the David Cooper hermeneutic he uses. In fact science is much more solidly tested and confirmed than Cooper's literalism.

Using evening and morning together means a regular 24 hour day

"And Moses said, this shall be when the Lord shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full." (Exodus 16:8)

"and the people stood by Moses from the morning until the evening." (Exodus 18:13)​

Some are. Doesn't mean every verse that mentions evening and morning is speaking about a 24 hour day.
Gen 49:27 "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf, in the morning devouring the prey and at evening dividing the spoil."
Psalm 90:4 4 For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
5 You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning-
6 though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered.
Zeph 3:3 Her officials within her are roaring lions; her judges are evening wolves that leave nothing till the morning.

I love the way in Psalm 90 where Moses discusses the creation he goes straight from telling us God's days really aren't anything like ours, to using morning and evening in a figurative description of our short lifetime.

When it says 7 days it means a regular 7 day week:

"six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day." (Exodus 20:11)​

The bible uses day figuratively and it uses 7 figuratively too. I don't see any reason why it can't use them together figuratively.

A text without a context is a pretext and the context of the use of 'yom' in Genesis 1 is clearly a regular 24 hour day. The use of the language and the context indicate that Genesis is both literal in it's meaning and historical in it's content. Another interesting literary feature that is rich in meaning and could offer some insights as to how the earth and the universe would appear to be so old. There are not 7 days described in the Genesis account of creation but eight. The first day mentioned is the initial creation:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

"in the day when the LORD God (יְהוָה אֱלֹהִי&#1501 made the earth and the heavens." (Genesis 2:4)​

As you say a text with out a context... Actually Gen 2:4 is one of the great pieces on context that give an indication how we should interpret the days in Gen 1. If Gen 1 describes a creation over six 'days' and the very next chapter describes God creating the heavens and the earth in a day, then we are probably not talking literal days.

You seem to think Gen 2:4 only refers to the Gen 1:1 part of creation, but again you need to look at the context, this time simply the rest of the verse. Gen 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. What are the 'these' in Gen 2:4 that is described as 'the generations' or genealogy? It is either referring back to the whole of Gen 1 as the generations of the heavens and the earth, all of the creation, or it is referring forward, again the creation of plants, animals, birds and mankind, and includes heavens and the earth too. Either way we are talking multi 'day' creation described as a single day.

Following that initial creation is an undetermined period of time which is probably why the term day is not applied to it in Genesis 1:1. The original creation left the earth void and without form and covered in darkness, the reducing atmosphere that so many scientists have concluded marked earth's early condition.

So we have an indeterminate period of creation in Gen 1:1, called a 'day' in Gen 2:4, plus another six days of creation in the rest of Gen 1. How many days does that make? It has got to be more than the in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day Exodus 20:11. But it is good to see you looking beyond the straight literalist six day creation Mark and exploring things like Gap Theory.

There are times things can be taken too literally like the sun standing still in Joshua, I don't think it means the sun stood still as much as the light was prolonged. I also think that passages in Song of Songs are taken far to figuratively like the descriptions of the garden thought to be allusions to intimacy when the passage is indicating a literal garden.

Is there anything in the Joshua passage that indicates it shouldn't be taken too literally? Because if there is, no one ever noticed it before Copernicus came along and showed the literal interpretation contradicted science. In contrast, plenty of church fathers and scripture scholars read Genesis 1 and realised from the text that the days weren't meant to be taken literally.

The point is simply this, if the intention was to expond upon the Scriptures rather then conflate them and contradict creationists the approach would be Scriptural. The truth is that in Liberal Theology I don't think they even take God literally and I have lingering doubts about some TEs as well.

Meh. Back to the ad homs.

Grace and peace,
Mark

Cheers Mark

Assyrian

 

[Iosias]

I've studied it through at least a dozen times, there is no hermeneutic other then a regular day.

Indeed, and yet this is not really the issue, or at least it shouldn't be. The most important thing to determine is the form, genre, setting and intention of the text under discussion. That is to say, until you can demonstrate that the genre is history then showing that yom means 'day' proves nothing.

As an aside, it is also vital to notice the theology going on here, see Creation and Construction.

 

[shernren]

We really have little to talk about then. What you’re espousing is that for anyone to take the words in the Bible and believe them, as written, to be true they are using conjecture and speculation on how God thinks to formulate their understanding. The power of the words themselves now have become handicapped by man and his need for “understanding.” Essentially the Bible now is impotent because the words don’t mean what they say, it is now open to individual interpretation.

(emphasis added)

Wow! I thought we all were agreed that the Reformation was a good idea?

The fact is that the Bible has been open to individual interpretation for centuries now, and if that made the Bible impotent I'm sorry to say that it was Luther and Calvin, not Darwin and Lyell, who first swung the castrating blade.

Indeed, the Bible had been open to interpretation even since the writing of the New Testament. For consider what Matthew says of our Lord's early days:

Now when [the wise men from the east]had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt I called my son."
[Mat 2:13-15 ESV]
​

It's such a sweet nativity tale isn't it? Except it's also an example of misinterpretation par excellence. Matthew is citing Hosea 11:1 verbatim, but the full passage says:

When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more they were called, the more they went away;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
[Hos 11:1-2 ESV]
​

Do you really think Hosea is talking about Jesus here? I don't, and you wouldn't. But Matthew apparently does (or at least writes as if he does). Not only is he misattributing to Jesus a passage speaking of Israel; not only does he consider Jesus' escape to Egypt the fulfillment of a prophecy that was describing (not even predicting!) the Israelites' already-completed Exodus; he is describing God's providence to Jesus from a passage that goes on to say how those God provided for would do nothing but disobey him!

If your pastor had done something like this on this Sunday morning from the pulpit you would have chastised and rebuked him. Yet when Matthew goes beyond non-literal use of Hosea to downright proof-texting and ignoring context, we canonize him and his book.

Doesn't the way Scripture treats Scripture tell us something about how we should treat Scripture?

 

[Assyrian]

Interestingly, in all this post you still haven't come up with a scriptural basis for the Cooper hermeneutic.

We really have little to talk about then. What you’re espousing is that for anyone to take the words in the Bible and believe them, as written, to be true they are using conjecture and speculation on how God thinks to formulate their understanding.

The problem isn't the literal interpretation, the problem is people thinking they have some fool proof method of excluding other interpretations of the passage, of thinking because they followed Coopers hermeneutic, their interpretation is the only correct one.

The power of the words themselves now have become handicapped by man and his need for “understanding.” Essentially the Bible now is impotent because the words don’t mean what they say, it is now open to individual interpretation. This then allows for the wild interpretative processes that somehow meld evolution into the text because extra-biblical ‘evidence’ can now be used to embellish Scripture to the point where meaning is whatever one chooses it to be. I’m sorry but this is something I would expect to read from an atheist, certainly not a professing Christian.

Oddly, when atheists attack the bible they usually use the same literal interpretation of Genesis YECs do.

You claim this isn’t a question about whether you believe this to be a bad hermeneutic or not but that when someone does read and interpret the words as written they must first show how it isn’t based upon speculation or conjecture.

I don't have a problem with people simply taking scripture at face value, it was taking scripture at face value that taught me how the bible goes beyond the literal meaning, and deep into metaphor, parable and allegory. If someone is really reading the bible as it is written they will see it isn't always written literally and we aren't always told when it is figurative. No the problem is when people are bound by a man made rule that tells them how to interpret scripture, especially when that rule has no basis in anything other than wishful thinking.

In other words, the plain meaning doesn’t exist because it hasn’t been justified by man.

Oh the plain meaning exists and TEs treat it with much more respect than YECs who try to change the plain meaning when it doesn't suit as we have seen over and over with Genesis 2 or the geocentric passages. What TEs realise is that the plain meaning of the text is not always what God means, the plain meaning of John 6 is Jesus is advocating cannibalism and the plain meaning of Exodus 19:4 is the Israelites were carried out of Egypt by giant eagles. It is not what God is saying, because he is not speaking literally, but it is the literal meaning of his words.

In effect you have now pitted the Words of God against the words of men by stating that any interpretation of Scripture that relies upon the plain meaning must be justified if it is to conflict with the ‘scientific’ findings of men.

I am saying any interpretation that is shown to be wrong has clearly misunderstood what God is saying. It does not matter whether the interpretation is literal or not, if we got it wrong we got it wrong. Sorry Vossler, that is part of being a Christian, being willing to change when we make a mistake. The real problem is thinking because we got this man made hermeneutic to tell us how to interpret scripture that our interpretation cannot possibly be wrong. It makes people unteachable.

1 Corinthians 1:18-21 states:

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
​

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."​

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
​

According to you my interpretation of the Bible, because it is based upon the personal conjecture and speculation of how I read it and because I haven’t provided any man derived ‘wisdom’ to support it,

You have the man derived 'wisdom,. I was looking for some sort of scriptural basis, something in the bible that tells you should only interpret it literally.

renders the plain meaning of these words impotent...

Actually, you do not allow the plain meaning of the words to speak anything other than your literal interpretation. Impotent? No. But you do muzzle scripture and limit what it can say to what David Cooper allows.

They, and any other text, must be first subject to be ‘filtered’ through some sort of man-derived process in order to be effective, so I'll let them stand up to your own filtration method which doesn't rely upon conjecture and speculation.

OK, I have picked out a few details in that section, but really I don't follow what you are trying to say there.

In short, this childlike faith of which you speak we are called to maturity from,

No, I clearly said a childlike faith was a good thing, it was a childish understanding we are supposed to grow out of. That is what the bible says anyway.

applies to how we see the science of Creation. [FONT=&quot]We need the solid meat that ‘science’ provides in order to understand the ‘baby talk’ that Scripture says. [/FONT]

No, science does not tell us how to understand scripture. It can tell you when your interpretation of scripture is wrong. Hasn't science shown again and again that the flat earth literal interpretation of Cosmas Indicopleustes was wrong? Didn't science show us the geocentric interpretations of the first millennium and a half of church history was wrong? Does science tell us how to interpret the geocentric passages? Actually no. There is nothing in science that says God communicates to us by accommodating his word to our limited understanding. On the other hand literalists have this strange habit of letting science tell them the real meaning of scripture, that the 'circle of the earth' means a ball, or the pillars of the earth are mantle plumes.

[FONT=&quot]See I always thought the maturity that 1 Corinthians 3 was referring to was spiritual and not worldly, but then again my interpretation is based on conjecture and speculation, not science.
[/FONT]

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
​

It is that too. Their envy and strife was evidence they were immature, but maturity is more than simply the fruit of the spirit, it is also growing in our understanding. 1Cor 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. For Paul maturity meant putting away his baby talk, his childish way of feeling, his childish understanding.

Maturity effect our understanding of biblical teaching as well as moral maturity Heb 5:12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

1Cor 2:13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 "For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

Cooper's hermeneutic is very simple and easy to understand, there is no reason a non Christian cannot take it, pick up the book of Genesis and come to the same interpretation as you do. But if we are taught by the Spirit to understand the things of God, it is not just that the natural man does not accept them, he does not even understand. Which raises the question whether Copper's rule for interpreting spiritual truth is the same as Paul's.

 

[vossler]

(emphasis added)

Wow! I thought we all were agreed that the Reformation was a good idea?

The fact is that the Bible has been open to individual interpretation for centuries now, and if that made the Bible impotent I'm sorry to say that it was Luther and Calvin, not Darwin and Lyell, who first swung the castrating blade.

I guess that's why your interpretation and mine can be polar opposites and somehow we're both right, at least according to the TE way of thinking. It somehow comes down to if you say you believe the words and I say the same then everything is somehow kosher regardless to what that meaning may be. I don't happen to accept that nor does the Bible support it. Some verses in the Bible do support multiple meanings, but not as the TE would ascribe. The multiple meanings are primarily from a depth of understanding perspective or enlightenment by the Spirit and not where the plain meaning of words say one thing, yet also something totally contrary to the first meaning.

Indeed, the Bible had been open to interpretation even since the writing of the New Testament. For consider what Matthew says of our Lord's early days:

Now when [the wise men from the east]had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, "Out of Egypt I called my son."
[Mat 2:13-15 ESV]
​

It's such a sweet nativity tale isn't it? Except it's also an example of misinterpretation par excellence. Matthew is citing Hosea 11:1 verbatim, but the full passage says:

When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more they were called, the more they went away;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
[Hos 11:1-2 ESV]
​

Do you really think Hosea is talking about Jesus here? I don't, and you wouldn't. But Matthew apparently does (or at least writes as if he does). Not only is he misattributing to Jesus a passage speaking of Israel; not only does he consider Jesus' escape to Egypt the fulfillment of a prophecy that was describing (not even predicting!) the Israelites' already-completed Exodus; he is describing God's providence to Jesus from a passage that goes on to say how those God provided for would do nothing but disobey him!

If your pastor had done something like this on this Sunday morning from the pulpit you would have chastised and rebuked him. Yet when Matthew goes beyond non-literal use of Hosea to downright proof-texting and ignoring context, we canonize him and his book.

Doesn't the way Scripture treats Scripture tell us something about how we should treat Scripture?

I happen to love it when God uses His Word in a manner such as this. All it does is point to the incredible depth and breadth of our Lord and how He can use His Word to cut to the heart of the matter without contradiction. The plain meaning essentially has two meanings that complement one another, simply awesome. Only God could do something as inventive as that. The first time it was plain and simple history documenting the exodus and the ultimate safety of Israel, the second time it was history being fulfilled when Jesus came from Egypt to provide salvation to not only Israel but the gentiles as well. So yes it does tell us something about how to treat Scripture, with reverence and respect, not with man-derived theories to support what it is we believe. It also demonstrates how even different meanings of the same text complement each other, instead of countering or taking away from it.

 

[vossler]

Interestingly, in all this post you still haven't come up with a scriptural basis for the Cooper hermeneutic.

If you want a verse in the Bible that supports that hermeneutic I don't know if there is one, nor am I looking for one. Looking for it would be akin to then wondering if any of the Bible has plain meaning. If it doesn't then God made Scripture so complex and unwieldy as to make it unapproachable and thereby impotent. The beauty of Scripture is the commonsensical approach that we can take to it. You don't need to be educated, wise, or have any other prerequisites to understand it, just an open mind and contrite spirit. We should all thank God it is so!

The problem isn't the literal interpretation, the problem is people thinking they have some fool proof method of excluding other interpretations of the passage, of thinking because they followed Coopers hermeneutic, their interpretation is the only correct one.

This isn't about a fool proof method, there is no such thing. This is about a methodology that over 90% of the time will serve the person extremely well.

Oddly, when atheists attack the bible they usually use the same literal interpretation of Genesis YECs do.

Of course they do, they have what they believe to be 'scientific' evidence that man and all creatures evolved, thereby eliminating God from the equation. It allows them to be masters of their destiny, or so they think. Scripture certainly doesn't make sense to them because of that and because they don't have an open mind nor a contrite heart. They are arrogant and self righteous and unwilling to humble themselves. Besides it is hard to attack an interpretation (TE) that number one agrees with them and can mean whatever it is one wants it to mean. You can't pin a TE down on too much.

I don't have a problem with people simply taking scripture at face value, it was taking scripture at face value that taught me how the bible goes beyond the literal meaning, and deep into metaphor, parable and allegory. If someone is really reading the bible as it is written they will see it isn't always written literally and we aren't always told when it is figurative. No the problem is when people are bound by a man made rule that tells them how to interpret scripture, especially when that rule has no basis in anything other than wishful thinking.

I'm not bound by any man made rules. The Cooper quote is there solely to help people remember not to rely upon the mental gymnastics of trying to bend and contort Scripture so that it fits into the evolutionary model. I read Scripture most of the time literally (at least at first), sometimes metaphorically and even allegorically if the context suits and supports it. I step away from the plain and simple meaning when the context allows it, just like the quote states.

Oh the plain meaning exists and TEs treat it with much more respect than YECs who try to change the plain meaning when it doesn't suit as we have seen over and over with Genesis 2 or the geocentric passages. What TEs realise is that the plain meaning of the text is not always what God means, the plain meaning of John 6 is Jesus is advocating cannibalism and the plain meaning of Exodus 19:4 is the Israelites were carried out of Egypt by giant eagles. It is not what God is saying, because he is not speaking literally, but it is the literal meaning of his words.

It's the red herring of geocentricism again. I'm sorry, as it has been repeated adnauseum, but that subject has no importance to anything. I did chuckle at the statement that TEs treat the plain meaning of Scripture with more respect though.

I am saying any interpretation that is shown to be wrong has clearly misunderstood what God is saying. It does not matter whether the interpretation is literal or not, if we got it wrong we got it wrong. Sorry Vossler, that is part of being a Christian, being willing to change when we make a mistake. The real problem is thinking because we got this man made hermeneutic to tell us how to interpret scripture that our interpretation cannot possibly be wrong. It makes people unteachable.

Ok you're now becoming comedic. Isn't it the TE who changes the plain meaning of Scripture based upon an atheistic theory?

If you, or anyone, can show me a Scriptural basis from which to change my thinking on a subject I'll be the first one to acknowledge my mistake. I welcome being proven wrong because it will draw me even closer to God. So please don't ever hesitate to do so.

No, I clearly said a childlike faith was a good thing, it was a childish understanding we are supposed to grow out of. That is what the bible says anyway.

But your prescription to grow out if it is via man-derived ideas instead of the Word of God.

There is nothing in science that says God communicates to us by accommodating his word to our limited understanding. On the other hand literalists have this strange habit of letting science tell them the real meaning of scripture, that the 'circle of the earth' means a ball, or the pillars of the earth are mantle plumes.

It's one thing to theorize what the 'circle of the earth' or 'pillars of the earth' mean, it's completely another when you base a doctrine on it. YEC's don't, TEs do!

BTW, I know of no literalists. YECs certainly are not literalists.

It is that too. Their envy and strife was evidence they were immature, but maturity is more than simply the fruit of the spirit, it is also growing in our understanding. 1Cor 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. For Paul maturity meant putting away his baby talk, his childish way of feeling, his childish understanding.

For the YEC it is the 'baby talk' of 7 days meaning, shock 7 days or morning meaning, wait morning. Then there's evening which shockingly to us means evening. Then there's the ultimate immaturity of believing a day is actually 24 hours. Oh the travesty of YEC.

Cooper's hermeneutic is very simple and easy to understand, there is no reason a non Christian cannot take it, pick up the book of Genesis and come to the same interpretation as you do.

Is that so bad? Where's the harm?

But if we are taught by the Spirit to understand the things of God, it is not just that the natural man does not accept them, he does not even understand. Which raises the question whether Copper's rule for interpreting spiritual truth is the same as Paul's.

Exactly, an atheist cannot understand (more likely he won't accept being under someone else's control) the simplicity of God's Word.

 

[shernren]

I guess that's why your interpretation and mine can be polar opposites and somehow we're both right ...

Hmm? I was saying you're completely wrong.

I'm not that nice.

I happen to love it when God uses His Word in a manner such as this. All it does is point to the incredible depth and breadth of our Lord and how He can use His Word to cut to the heart of the matter without contradiction. The plain meaning essentially has two meanings that complement one another, simply awesome. Only God could do something as inventive as that. The first time it was plain and simple history documenting the exodus and the ultimate safety of Israel, the second time it was history being fulfilled when Jesus came from Egypt to provide salvation to not only Israel but the gentiles as well. So yes it does tell us something about how to treat Scripture, with reverence and respect, not with man-derived theories to support what it is we believe. It also demonstrates how even different meanings of the same text complement each other, instead of countering or taking away from it.

Did you actually read Hosea 11?

When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more they were called, the more they went away;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk;
I took them up by their arms,
but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love,
and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws,
and I bent down to them and fed them.
They shall not return to the land of Egypt,
but Assyria shall be their king,
because they have refused to return to me.
The sword shall rage against their cities,
consume the bars of their gates,
and devour them because of their own counsels.
My people are bent on turning away from me,
and though they call out to the Most High,
he shall not raise them up at all.
[Hos 11:1-7 ESV]
​

Trying to apply this passage to Jesus would imply that Jesus "kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols"; that "Assyria shall be [his] king"; that "the sword shall devour [him] because of [his] own counsels"; that he was bent on turning away from God.

The fact is that this passage (as is the rest of Hosea) is a lament from God for His idolatrous people. How could the sinless Son of God possibly be the subject of such a lament? How could Matthew possibly think these were suitable words to describe our Lord? Either he thought our Lord was a sinful idolater ... or he knew something about meanings not necessarily being plain that you don't.

 

[Iosias]

Only God could do something as inventive as that. The first time it was plain and simple history documenting the exodus and the ultimate safety of Israel, the second time it was history being fulfilled when Jesus came from Egypt to provide salvation to not only Israel but the gentiles as well. So yes it does tell us something about how to treat Scripture, with reverence and respect, not with man-derived theories to support what it is we believe. It also demonstrates how even different meanings of the same text complement each other, instead of countering or taking away from it.

I find Ratzinger to be helpful on this:

a. There is an Old Testament theology of the Old Testament, which the historian ascertains within the Old Testament and which has of course already developed a number of overlapping layers even there, in which old texts are reread and reinterpreted in the light of new events. The phenomenon of texts growing and developing in new situations, of revelation developing through a new interpretation of the old, quite substantially shapes the inner structure of the Old Testament itself.


b. There is a New Testament theology of the Old Testament, which does not coincide with the Old Testament’s own inner theology of the Old Testament, though it is certainly linked to it in the unity of the analogia fidei. We could perhaps on this basis even say in a new way what the analogia fidei between the testaments means. As we said, the New Testament theology of the Old Testament is not in fact identical with the Old Testament’s own inner theology of the Old Testament, as it can be historically discerned; rather, it is a new interpretation, in the light of the Christ-event, which is not produced by mere historical reflection on the Old Testament alone. By effecting such a change in interpretation, it is not however doing anything completely foreign to the nature of the Old Testament, approaching it only from the outside; rather, it is continuing the inner structure of the Old Testament, which itself lives and grows through such reinterpretations.
​

Ratzinger, J. (2005) God’s Word: Scripture, Tradition, Office. Ignatius Press. pp. 60-61

 

[Iosias]

Either he thought our Lord was a sinful idolater ... or he knew something about meanings not necessarily being plain that you don't.

I think the solution is to see the writer of the Gospel as engaging in a theological interpretation.

 

[Assyrian]

Some verses in the Bible do support multiple meanings, but not as the TE would ascribe. The multiple meanings are primarily from a depth of understanding perspective or enlightenment by the Spirit and not where the plain meaning of words say one thing, yet also something totally contrary to the first meaning.

I wonder... Is the interpretation that we partake of bread and wine that are a symbolic representation of the body and blood of Christ contrary to the traditional literal interpretation that the bread and wine are genuinely transformed in Christ's body and blood and that is it flesh and blood we consume not bread and wine? A literal interpretation of Exodus 19:4 You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself, says they flew out of Egypt carried by giant birds, whereas interpreting it as a metaphor, in spite of God saying they were eyewitnesses to the event, contradicts the literal interpretation and says they didn't fly, they walked.

Anyway Vossler, it is actually quite encouraging hearing you talk this way. David Cooper says once you have the literal meaning and it makes common sense to you, 'you should seek no other sense'. You clearly do not allow yourself to be bound by this and recognise that there can be many different layers of meaning in scripture. On top of that, I am sure you recognise there are interpretations, literal or otherwise, that are simply wrong, Cosmas's flat earth interpretations, the geocentric interpretations, even the literal interpretation of the eucharist. Which brings me to the third piece of the puzzle, There are passages with multiple layers of interpretation where the literal meaning of the text is not a correct interpretation, this is my body, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, the trees... said to the olive tree 'Reign over us.'