What opinion? I'm not going off of any opinion when it comes to my understanding of the bible. I'd hope no one did that. I look to the Spirit to guide me in my understanding. I pray in earnest to be shown the truth in all matters.
You assume Christians in the past only gave what they thought the bible said, whereas your views are looking at what the bible does say. Of course believers through the ages have tried to understand what the bible does say, and prayed for wisdom to understand it. But the bible is the eternal and almighty God communicating with man, his thoughts are far above ours and his ways high above our too. We can come to some understanding of what God is saying, but even Paul said he was only seeing through a glass darkly. All our understanding of what God is saying to us in his word, even in our deepest understanding, is still only a frail limited human opinion. And better people than us have got it wrong in the past. Luther and Calvin and all the church fathers believed the bible taught geocentrism.
1st) I'm not sure what Luther and Calvin thought. And in all reality it doesn't matter much. If they were wrong they were wrong. Just because they were pioneers in the faith didn't mean they had everything right.
Of course. But if men of God like these can make such a basic mistake, we need to realise we are not immune. Of course it was science, the study of God's universe, that showed us Luther and Calvin got it wrong, so it is not very wise for Creationists to think their interpretation means the science has to be wrong. It wasn't in the past.
2nd) Jesus did indeed call Himself the Vine and the Door, and we know those are just metaphors used to describe His relationship with us in regards to salvation. This doesn't help your stance any because it's already been established that at times He speaks in parables, and at times He is being literal.
You just have to figure out which is which. Of course if you mistake a figurative passage for literal, then you are going to get the interpretation wrong. Some early church writer took 'the ends of the earth wrong' and other passages literally and thought the bible teaches a flat earth. Other as we have seen took the geocentric passages literally, but this is missing the point God is teaching in these passages. And you have people who take the creation days literally. But if these are not meant literally, then young earth creationism is as much a mistaken interpretation as flat earth or geocentrism were in the past.
If we don't take Genesis literal, where do we stop? Were the three Hebrew boys really thrown into a fire and preserved by God. Did Nebuchadnezzar really have a dream that was explained by Daniel? Did Christ really come from Heaven and was He really born of a virgin?
This is the classic slippery slope argument, but it doesn't work because we are already on the slope. You already know there are scriptures that are figurative, you know Jesus wasn't literally a vine, but it doesn't make you question the virgin birth does it? In fact this was one of the issues the Catholic Church had with Galileo, because if you can't the rely on the bible says about geocentrism how can you trust what it says about the virgin birth.
The bible explains itself. When the story being told is a parable, it is explained as such. When the language is metaphoric it is explained as such. When it is literal it is plainly said.
Those are simply the metaphor and parables that are easy to spot, but Jesus would not have causes nearly so much confusion if he always said when he was going to use a metaphor or give a parable. But he didn't. And the OT is full of metaphors and parables that are given straight without the slightest hint. 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.
Tell me. For every matter in the bible that science can't explain, should we simply take it symbolically?
There is a differnce between what science cannot explain and what it says isn't true. The bible can't explain the resurrection, but I would not expect it to. On the other hand science tells us the earth isn't flat, it is an oblate spheroid, and the earth isn't fixed in place and sitting on pillars, nor does the sun go round the earth. We know the flat earth and geocentric interpretations are wrong, not because science cannot explain them but because science shows us they are wrong, just like it tells us the earth is billions of years old, not 6000 year old.
My problem with evolution is not its age. It's that it is a theory that gets rid of God. It removes His hand from creation. What's sad is that we have christians trying to justify it.
The church has always known that God operate both through the supernatural miracles and through the ordinary working of the natural world. Does understanding about agriculture and cookery remove God from providing our daily bread? Christians still thank pray for God's provision and thank him for their food. I believe God formed my in my mother's womb, I love Psalm 139 I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Yet I see no contradiction between that and the lessons I learned about human reproduction in biology class.
