Did this really happen?

[pastorkevin73]

Pretty much all TEs say that Gen 1 did not literally happen. I am curious to see what you think about other miraculous events recorded in the Bible, whether they literally or physically happened.

In the next post is a list of 20 miraculous events recorded in the Bible, including the creation account. Please respond by each number answering yes or no. Thanks.

Edit: This is open for everyone to answer just not TEs.

Edit: This thread is not intended to discuss. If you wish to discuss this thread you can do so here.

 

[pastorkevin73]

Do you believe that the following physically happened?

1. Gen 1 – Creation of the universe and all life in six days (24 hour periods).
2. Gen 6 – The flood
3. Gen 19 – Sodom & Gomorrah destroyed
4. Ex 3 – God speaking for a burning but not consumed bush
5. Ex 14 – Parting of the Red Sea
6. Ex 17 – water from a rock
7. Ex 20 – God speaks the ten commandments to Moses and Israel
8. Num 16 – The earth opened up and Korah, Dathan and Abiram fall into the earth.
9. Num 22 – Balaam’s donkey speaks
10. Josh 3 – The Jordan river, at flood stage, stops to flow.
11. Josh 5&6 – The walls of Jericho fall
12. 1 Sam 3 – God speaks to Samuel.
13. 1 Ki 18 – Alter starts on fire by God
14. 2 Ki 2 – Elijah taken up to heaven without dying
15. 2 Ki 6 – Axe head floats
16. Matt 1 – The virgin birth of Jesus
17. Matt 14 – Jesus Feeds the 5000 with five loaves and two fish
18. Matt 14 – Jesus and Peter walk on the water.
19. Luke 4 – Jesus casts out demons and heals many
20. Acts 3 – Peter heals a crippled beggar.

 

[Deamiter]

My fiancée always tries to nail me down on specific passages too, but I don't really understand the insistance on "yes or no."

Each and every one of these passages has much to teach us about God. But do I BELIEVE that they happened exactly as you (a YEC) tend to believe?

Why is, "I don't know" an unacceptable answer? I think it's entirely plausable that when the Bible speaks of a flood that destroyed the world, it could be talking about the world that the Hebrew people knew (as similar phrases are used for other events we assume to be local). Did God speak audibly to Moses or did he "speak" as he does to me through prayer and meditation?

The real question is, "why does this matter?" I believe that there is much in the Bible that I have yet to learn and profit from. Much of the truth in the Old Testement is written in the style of other ANE cultures that NEVER wrote in the style of today's newspapers recording all pertinant facts in a (mostly) unbiased way.

We could talk for days about my personal opinion on specific events -- about whether I think it happened exactly as it is described in the Bible or if the Biblical account is designed to describe the meaning of the events. We could debate just as long about what the passages actually claim (i.e. do they claim a global flood?).

In the end though, wouldn't it be much more profitable as Christians to discuss the meaning and message in these passages rather than trying to pin down opinions on which is newspaper-accurate?

 

[busterdog]

In my experience with TEs on this issue, I think the answer for the NT matters is as follows.

The NT witness is evidence of an event, such as walking on water.

Gen. 1 is not a "witness" of an event, but poetry. At times, I think we get a glimpse into the view that this comes of a decision to look at "evidence" of the age of the earth, which allows us to infer that Gen. 1 was intended as poetry.

As for walking on water, we have the NT evidence and nothing contrary, so TE accepts it literally, in many cases.

While the TE view seems to make a distinction between cases in which there is evidence for (the Gospels as witness of a miracle) and cases in which there is evidence against (background microwave radiation proving a 15 billion year old BB), but I am not clear on why evidence that walking on water is "impossible" is different from evidence that creation in a day is impossible.

We can also debate whether or not Gen.1 has a surface text indicated a six day creation, it seems that the question is which type of evidence (the canon) is to be elevated above other kinds of evidence (observed and measured quantities in science).

 

[Mallon]

1. Gen 1 – Creation of the universe and all life in six days (24 hour periods).

Didn't literally happen. No physical evidence for such.

2. Gen 6 – The flood

Didn't literally happen on a global scale. No physical evidence for such.

3. Gen 19 – Sodom & Gomorrah destroyed

No physical evidence either way.

4. Ex 3 – God speaking for a burning but not consumed bush

No physical evidence either way.

5. Ex 14 – Parting of the Red Sea

No physical evidence either way.

6. Ex 17 – water from a rock

No physical evidence either way.

7. Ex 20 – God speaks the ten commandments to Moses and Israel

No physical evidence either way.

8. Num 16 – The earth opened up and Korah, Dathan and Abiram fall into the earth.

No physical evidence either way.

9. Num 22 – Balaam’s donkey speaks

No physical evidence either way.

10. Josh 3 – The Jordan river, at flood stage, stops to flow.

No physical evidence either way.

11. Josh 5&6 – The walls of Jericho fall

No physical evidence either way.

12. 1 Sam 3 – God speaks to Samuel.

No physical evidence either way.

13. 1 Ki 18 – Alter starts on fire by God

No physical evidence either way.

14. 2 Ki 2 – Elijah taken up to heaven without dying

No physical evidence either way.

15. 2 Ki 6 – Axe head floats

No physical evidence either way.

16. Matt 1 – The virgin birth of Jesus

No physical evidence either way.

17. Matt 14 – Jesus Feeds the 5000 with five loaves and two fish

No physical evidence either way.

18. Matt 14 – Jesus and Peter walk on the water.

No physical evidence either way.

19. Luke 4 – Jesus casts out demons and heals many

No physical evidence either way.

20. Acts 3 – Peter heals a crippled beggar.

No physical evidence either way.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

i'd love to answer the question but i don't know how you are using a group of similiar terms.

really happened
physically happened
literally happened

Here is my basic problem.
I accept science as mankind fundamental tool for investigating the cosmos, including looking backwards in time, although lots of this topic are historical in nature rather than being strictly scientific. But as a result of my accepting science as a valid tool i think that the universe is roughly 13.5Byears old and the earth is 4.5B.

However, i realize that the OPer is not like me in this way. He is YEC and believes that the universe and the world are 6k years old. Now this poses a serious problem for me in answering any questions he might pose that reflect on things that happened in the past. For YECism fundamentally proposes a type of curtain at about 6kya, a curtain that is impossible to peer beyond or behind, but yet to science looks perfectly opaque and leaves no trace on any scientific tools or instruments or theories that we have to look at the past. This curtain is only perceptive to a certain kind of people-YECist, the rest of us mere morals are unable to see the curtain and pretend to be able to see beyond it, without any perceptive difficulties.

Now the problem happens in how i can compare my understanding of the past, which really assumes a certain continuity of the past and present with the original posters understanding of the past. We really have two different realities, theirs-YECists- which proposes this radical curtain hanging somewhere in the past and science's which has not yet detected anything of the sort.

Now my problem is "where is this curtain, exactly"? is it, as Bishop Ussher proposed several hundred years ago at 4004BC, measuring time in the conventional scientific sense? or is it somewhere else? I don't know, but the safest thing to assume is that i don't know and therefore i can not compare my understanding of the past with a YECists. not 6K years old, not 100 years ago, not even last week. For that curtain could literally be anywhere, since i can not see it, being morally incompetent by accepting uniformity as a good assumption to do science.

The end result is that i have no way to line up and compare my knowledge of history with any time line that a YECists might have in his/her mind. They are completely different and incommensurate histories.

so until i really understand how these terms:
literal, physical, real
can be so different in the two systems, i am unable to begin to compare the knowledge of scientific history in my head to a YECists history. The issue is complicated by the fact that we have only one word to label both of these distinctly different ideas-history. fortunately German is not as limited as is English for it has two terms: Geschichte and Historie.
So if the OPer can explain how i can related YECism's (Heils) Geschichte to modern science's Historie then i will have a fighting chance to line up the two different ideas of "real", "literal", and "physical" history and answer the OP.

notes:
i was writing this as others were posting their replies, this is exactly the same problem as posting #5 expresses with "no physical evidence", this is the incommensurability of the two: YECism's Heilsgeschichte and modern science's Historie.

since i do not have access to YECism's Heilsgeschichte but only access to science's Historie, i am unable to attempt to draw the parallel lines asked for in the OP between the two. If the OPer can show me how to map his Heilsgeschichte moments listed in the OP as the 20 miracles onto my Historie then i can tell him if i have those same points, in the same places as he puts them. until then i am at a loss as to how to answer the question. sorry.

 

[Deamiter]

While the TE view seems to make a distinction between cases in which there is evidence for (the Gospels as witness of a miracle) and cases in which there is evidence against (background microwave radiation proving a 15 billion year old BB), but I am not clear on why evidence that walking on water is "impossible" is different from evidence that creation in a day is impossible.

I should note that it's not a matter of "impossibility." We would not presume to claim that there are things that God could not do (beyond the absurd like creating a rock so big he couldn't lift it). The issue is with evidence of the past. I love how mallon has put it -- we know that the ancient Hebrew culture did not value scientific accuracy as we do. Instead they valued meaning in their records of events. How are we then to "choose" where they meet today's standards and when they do not? In a limited number of cases, we do have physical evidence (on the flood and age of the earth for example). In most cases, we have no such evidence.

And that is in NO way an attempt to say that the ancient Hebrew standard is somehow lesser than our ultra-literal historical standard! I can learn MUCH more about God and how to live my life from analogys, metaphor and through storytelling than from a newspaper description of the Hebrew people, their actions and their interactions with others!

Anyway, I'll stand by mallon's response. In most of the cases, there's no way to verify the historical accuracy of the account so I tend to focus on the meaning intended in the passage rather than getting hung up on details like how many inches above or below the waves Jesus' feet were suspended.

 

[DailyBlessings]

I don't see why the distinction is important- the miracles may have literally happened, but they are just as important to me whether they did or not. This whole insistence on literal evidential support seems needlessly 20th cen. humanistic, to me.

 

[chaoschristian]

I could respond to:

Do you believe the following happened?

or I could respond to:

Do you accept that there is evidence that the following happened?

I cannot respond to:

Do you believe that the following physically happened?

for the same reasons as others have already indicated.

But in order to make a good faith effort in responding to the OP I'll share this:

all of the events may or may not have happened as described. Since I hold that all of scripture is necessarily primarily myth, it really doesn't matter. What matters is that there was meaning in recording the event as happening, and it is my duty to discern what the meaning is and how and why it is to guide me as a would be disciple of Christ.

My faith is not founded on the existance of physicial evidence for any of these events, nor is it founded upon the 'factualness' or 'truthiness' of these events.

It is founded upon something completely different and unrelated to materialism.

Do you believe that the following physically happened?

1. Gen 1 – Creation of the universe and all life in six days (24 hour periods).
2. Gen 6 – The flood
3. Gen 19 – Sodom & Gomorrah destroyed
4. Ex 3 – God speaking for a burning but not consumed bush
5. Ex 14 – Parting of the Red Sea
6. Ex 17 – water from a rock
7. Ex 20 – God speaks the ten commandments to Moses and Israel
8. Num 16 – The earth opened up and Korah, Dathan and Abiram fall into the earth.
9. Num 22 – Balaam’s donkey speaks
10. Josh 3 – The Jordan river, at flood stage, stops to flow.
11. Josh 5&6 – The walls of Jericho fall
12. 1 Sam 3 – God speaks to Samuel.
13. 1 Ki 18 – Alter starts on fire by God
14. 2 Ki 2 – Elijah taken up to heaven without dying
15. 2 Ki 6 – Axe head floats
16. Matt 1 – The virgin birth of Jesus
17. Matt 14 – Jesus Feeds the 5000 with five loaves and two fish
18. Matt 14 – Jesus and Peter walk on the water.
19. Luke 4 – Jesus casts out demons and heals many
20. Acts 3 – Peter heals a crippled beggar.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

My faith is not founded on the existance of physicial evidence for any of these events, nor is it founded upon the 'factualness' or 'truthiness' of these events.

It is founded upon something completely different and unrelated to materialism.

'truthiness'

Truthiness is a satirical term invented[1] by Stephen Colbert in reference to the quality by which a person claims to know something intuitively, instinctively, or "from the gut" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or actual facts (similar to the meaning of "bellyfeel", a Newspeak term from George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). Colbert created this definition of the word during the inaugural episode (October 17, 2005) of his satirical television program The Colbert Report, as the subject of a segment called "The WØRD". It was named word of the year for 2005 by the American Dialect Society and for 2006 by Merriam-Webster

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

for those unaware of the neologism.

 

[BelindaP]

I am a hybrid TE/gap theorist, and I believe that Genesis 1 is literally true. It is often mistranslated or misunderstood, though.

 

[pastorkevin73]

My fiancée always tries to nail me down on specific passages too, but I don't really understand the insistance on "yes or no."

Each and every one of these passages has much to teach us about God. But do I BELIEVE that they happened exactly as you (a YEC) tend to believe?

Why is, "I don't know" an unacceptable answer? I think it's entirely plausable that when the Bible speaks of a flood that destroyed the world, it could be talking about the world that the Hebrew people knew (as similar phrases are used for other events we assume to be local). Did God speak audibly to Moses or did he "speak" as he does to me through prayer and meditation?

The real question is, "why does this matter?" I believe that there is much in the Bible that I have yet to learn and profit from. Much of the truth in the Old Testement is written in the style of other ANE cultures that NEVER wrote in the style of today's newspapers recording all pertinant facts in a (mostly) unbiased way.

We could talk for days about my personal opinion on specific events -- about whether I think it happened exactly as it is described in the Bible or if the Biblical account is designed to describe the meaning of the events. We could debate just as long about what the passages actually claim (i.e. do they claim a global flood?).

In the end though, wouldn't it be much more profitable as Christians to discuss the meaning and message in these passages rather than trying to pin down opinions on which is newspaper-accurate?

Sorry for not giving the option for "I don't know". I realize that there may be some of these that people are wrestling whether believe that some of these events have happened or not. If you need to use this as an option, feel free to do so.

 

[Deamiter]

Sorry for not giving the option for "I don't know". I realize that there may be some of these that people are wrestling whether believe that some of these events have happened or not. If you need to use this as an option, feel free to do so.

I really do apologize as I feel we've almost hijacked your thread discussing the validity of the OP's question. To answer as best I can, I'd answer no to the first (creation in 6 24-hour days) a qualified no to the second (the flood did not cover the entire Earth) and "I don't know" to the rest. Note that besides the first two (which I consider conclusions) I really DON'T have a strong opinion.

If you want GUESSES, I could probably go through and based on what I know now and what I've read on these texts (which is more for some than others) say whether I think it's likely the account is accurate by today's scientific standards, but I am in no way qualified to do such a thing (having researched more theology and less literary history).

I'm mostly just worried that somebody in the future will, either implicitly or explicitly, cite my answers here as beliefs or try to use them in a logical argument against my theology which would really annoy me since the best I could do for all but the first two are rather uneducated guesses based more on gut feeling than on logic, theology or knowledge.

 

[vossler]

When one views whether something happened or not by the physical evidence, well I think that says a lot about our faith.

 

[BelindaP]

It doesn't hurt when the physical evidence backs up our faith, though. The more Science discovers, the more it falls in harmony with the scriptures.

 

[Assyrian]

When one views whether something happened or not by the physical evidence, well I think that says a lot about our faith.

Maybe it also says a lot about whether your faith is in God or in a particular system of bible interpretation.

Pretty much all TEs say that Gen 1 did not literally happen. I am curious to see what you think about other miraculous events recorded in the Bible, whether they literally or physically happened.

In the next post is a list of 20 miraculous events recorded in the Bible, including the creation account. Please respond by each number answering yes or no. Thanks.

Sorry for not giving the option for "I don't know". I realize that there may be some of these that people are wrestling whether believe that some of these events have happened or not. If you need to use this as an option, feel free to do so.

A simple Yes, No, or Don't know still doesn't begin to scratch the surface. A good illustration of this is your statement: Pretty much all TEs say that Gen 1 did not literally happen. Pretty much all TEs believe the creation happened, we just don't think the events are being described literally in Gen 1. So when you ask whether we believe in miraculous events recorded in the bible you ar asking whether we believe your interpretation of how the bible describes the events. Equally revealing are the miracles you leave out. Why not have:

12. Josh 10 The sun stopped moving when Joshua commanded it to stand still
(do you really believe the sun was orbiting around the earth and stopped moving at Joshua's commanded?)

19. Matt 26 Jesus turned bread and wine into his own flesh and blood.

Before you ask whether we believe a miracle happened as recorded in the bible, we first have to look at what the text actually says, and try to understand what is being described, and how it is being described to us.

 

[gluadys]

For me, one of the problematical terms is "miracle". The OP lists all of these as "miraculous" events. What is implied by that.

In today's terminology, this usually implies something that cannot happen naturally.

It is noteworthy that the original Hebrew term actually means "sign" and could be applied to either a natural or a supernatural event, the important point being that it showed God acting on behalf of Israel.

There are a number of events in the list for which plausible natural causes have been suggested.

Take an event not on the list: feeding the Israelites with quail. Some have suggested that the quail appeared when they did because it was the time and route of their annual migration. According to this perspective, it was not a supernatural event that the put quail there, but the coincidence of their arrival with the need of the Israelites made it a sign of God's care for his people.

In such a case there is no difficulty affirming that the event could have happened physically, but there could still be debate over whether or not it was "miraculous". That is, is this God exercising supernatural power or acting through natural process?

I think, in the biblical perspective, the question is irrelevant. A sign is a sign, no matter how God gives it. But if we use the typical modern definition which separates the natural from the miraculous, there are a good number of events in the list which could have happened physically without requiring supernatural power.

Finally, the OP asks if one believes the events did happen physically. Because of lack of evidence in most cases, I think the best one can say is that it could have happened physically, but we simply don't know if it did or not.

 

[pastorkevin73]

Some of you are making this more difficult than it is. Don't think so hard. Do you believe or not. Or are you undecided as of yet. Pretty simple really.

 

[Assyrian]

Do you believe the sun halted it's course around the earth and that bread became meat like the bible says? Or is it not that simple?

 

[vossler]

Maybe it also says a lot about whether your faith is in God or in a particular system of bible interpretation.

In order to have faith in God one has to know God. We know Him through a relationship that is anchored in His Word and it forms the foundation of our knowledge concerning Him. Faith without knowledge is blind, that's why it is so important to know Him and His truths which are so clearly shown to us in His Word. In order to know those truths effectively requires Bible study, prayer, action and more Bible study. Our faith is in Him and His Word alone not in science's ability to prove whether something He said did or did not occur.