Scripture and Creation

[shernren]

I understand your points, they're succinct and logical. Yet they still don't address the core issue; what did God say?

How do you know what you heard is what God said?

I use Miranda IM as a stand-in for Y! Messenger when I'm home, and often I dash off for a meal and leave my account online with the message "Out to Lunch". Let's say you see a person who's online with Yahoo. He normally talks to me, but he isn't talking right now. So you ask: "Why aren't you talking to shernren?"

"Oh, he's out for dinner."

"Dinner? But his message says 'Out to Lunch'!"

"Well, friend, it's 7:50 pm, and it's very late for his lunch. That's why."

Now look at the situation. Did he reach the right conclusion? Maybe; maybe not. Maybe that particular day I hadn't eaten lunch and so that meal at 7:50 pm was really lunch for me. Maybe I am a strange person who calls dinner lunch as well. Maybe I call all my meals lunch.

But the explanation is simple. Miranda has no "Out to Dinner" message. So I put the closest thing I have. Did I intend to deceive my friend? Am I now a liar for having told him I was at lunch when I was at dinner? No: in the first place, it was the fault of the protocol, not I who gave the message or my friend who received it; in the second place, I put it there with the intention of conveying the essential, that I was eating and thus not free to reply, which the message conveyed well enough even though it could not be factual enough because of the protocol.

Do you get the point of my analogy? When an infinite God decides to express Himself through finite human language, choosing a prescientific culture in which to manifest His covenant nature, there will be distortions and omissions that originate not from God lying, or from His people reading wrong, but from the simple fact that the Bible has a finite number of words and thus can only express a finite number (though large enough! ) of concepts, in a way limited by the culture and language of the reader. God took enough care to ensure that His core theme - that man has sinned and that God has made a way out - was transmitted exactly and without dispute, for only the basic human concepts of love and justice and sacrifice were needed for that. But if God were to wait for the scientific concepts necessary to fully transmit the way in which He created the universe, you'd only start getting Genesis 1 today, and from the mouth of an American scientist.

(I hope I'm expressing myself well enough through my finite and fallible language, heh. )

To my conclusion, then: we know enough of what God has said, but not all of what God has said, and most TEs will contend that His exact creative methods are outside of the enough and thus up for debate and discussion. An agreement to disagree is sufficient, at least for me.

 

[vossler]

First things first, that was quite an analogy you provided. Well thought out and easy to follow. You express yourself quite well given your finite and very fallible mind.

After saying that you'll probably not find my response to your liking. First of all, this isn't about what I heard God say, it's about what God wrote. Let's think about this rationally, if God really took billions of years why would he say days? He could have said "over a period of time" and we all would have understood Him fine. In addition, He didn't just use the word day all by itself, He went through the trouble of using the words evening and morning in conjuction with day. On top of that He identifies the days by number. So this isn't about an infinite God not being able to convey a message to finite man, no it's about finite man not being willing to accept that he just doesn't know much at all about Creation.

In conclusion, we know all of what God wanted and needed for us to know. Obviously, for us, an agreement to disagree will have to suffice; at least for now.

 

[shernren]

First things first, that was quite an analogy you provided. Well thought out and easy to follow. You express yourself quite well given your finite and very fallible mind.

After saying that you'll probably not find my response to your liking. First of all, this isn't about what I heard God say, it's about what God wrote. Let's think about this rationally, if God really took billions of years why would he say days? He could have said "over a period of time" and we all would have understood Him fine. In addition, He didn't just use the word day all by itself, He went through the trouble of using the words evening and morning in conjuction with day. On top of that He identifies the days by number. So this isn't about an infinite God not being able to convey a message to finite man, no it's about finite man not being willing to accept that he just doesn't know much at all about Creation.

In conclusion, we know all of what God wanted and needed for us to know. Obviously, for us, an agreement to disagree will have to suffice; at least for now.

But that was precisely my point! You only "know" God writes / says something when you read / hear it. "What God wrote" is really "what I read"; to give a most blatant example, what you read was English, whereas what God wrote was most definitely not English. What is happening is that you are taking in Genesis 1 through your literal / historical Enlightenment glasses and even before you read the first word you start thinking: "This is God reporting live from Heaven: A blow-by-blow account of the creation of the universe!" and we do not know that that was what God intended to say to the prescientific, preEnlightenment Hebrews.

I could just as well ask, if God really took 6 days why does His creation say billions of years, and there we'd go all over again.

yeah. agree to disagree, huh?

 

[vossler]

But that was precisely my point! You only "know" God writes / says something when you read / hear it. "What God wrote" is really "what I read"; to give a most blatant example, what you read was English, whereas what God wrote was most definitely not English. What is happening is that you are taking in Genesis 1 through your literal / historical Enlightenment glasses and even before you read the first word you start thinking: "This is God reporting live from Heaven: A blow-by-blow account of the creation of the universe!" and we do not know that that was what God intended to say to the prescientific, preEnlightenment Hebrews.

I could just as well ask, if God really took 6 days why does His creation say billions of years, and there we'd go all over again.

yeah. agree to disagree, huh?

His Creation says it took billions of years to you and most other scientists, yet His Word says otherwise. Hmmm....how do we reconcile this? Somehow saying that what He said was so deep and requires such an incredible amount of study of Creation, not of Scripture, in order for us to understand it, isn't IMO, and from the way I read Scripture, what God wanted us to do. How about we just trust Him at His Word?

If I didn't read Genesis as it is presented, a historical account of Creation, and used the approach your promoting, just think of all the Scripture that we could now reinterpret, analyze and have to think through everytime it didn't meet our human understanding. I'm sorry but this requires way too much of me and not very much of Him.

~Yeah, agree to disagree~

 

[The Lady Kate]

His Creation says it took billions of years to you and most other scientists, yet His Word says otherwise.

Does his word say it, or is that how you choose to read it?

Understanding the difference here may clear up a few things...

Hmmm....how do we reconcile this? Somehow saying that what He said was so deep and requires such an incredible amount of study of Creation, not of Scripture, in order for us to understand it, isn't IMO, and from the way I read Scripture, what God wanted us to do.

Well, that is certainly your opinion, and you're entitled to it.... but considering that what He said was about Creation, doesn't it make more sense to study Creation to see what He was talking about?

How about we just trust Him at His Word?

You mean assume that everything He said was literal, flat, and dull? I'd like to think God has a poetic side to Him... IMO

If I didn't read Genesis as it is presented, a historical account of Creation, and used the approach your promoting, just think of all the Scripture that we could now reinterpret, analyze and have to think through everytime it didn't meet our human understanding. I'm sorry but this requires way too much of me and not very much of Him.

So... the problem is you don't want to put the effort into it?

~Yeah, agree to disagree~

Guess so.