Theistic Evolution is Unbiblical!

[Calminian]

Hmmm... Peaceful with equal rights and no excessively poweful concerns?

Peace comes with price, even peace on your continent......thanks to america.

 

[PaladinValer]

Leftist? You obviously have no clue about foreign politics...

It is not just the "leftists" in Europe who are discusted with US policy. The moderates and rightists are equally angery.

Personally, I'm rather tired of my own country's neo-nationalism. It is babyish, immature, and egotistic. Just because the USA is the hegemon doesn't mean we should bully people around like canonfodder.

 

[Calminian]

Leftist? You obviously have no clue about foreign politics...

It is not just the "leftists" in Europe who are discusted with US policy. The moderates and rightists are equally angery.

Personally, I'm rather tired of my own country's neo-nationalism. It is babyish, immature, and egotistic. Just because the USA is the hegemon doesn't mean we should bully people around like canonfodder.

You can be embarrassed about your country if you want. I'm proud of it. And I'm proud the current president has the courage to fight terror and terror supporting countries. And you may recall that in his re-election he received more votes than another other president in history.

PV have you considered moving to Canada or France?

 

[mhess13]

You can be embarrassed about your country if you want. I'm proud of it. And I'm proud the current president has the courage to fight terror and terror supporting countries. And you may recall that in his re-election he received more votes than another other president in history.

PV have you considered moving to Canada or France?

GREAT POST!

 

[Calminian]

GREAT POST!

Now I'm definitely way off topic. My apologies. I'll try to give them the last word. It's not going to be easy, though.

 

[mhess13]

Now I'm definitely way off topic. My apologies. I'll try to give them the last word. It's not going to be easy, though.

rwilliams got it off topic with his silly slavery stuff. I guess he hasn't heard about how a belief in evolution has also been used to justify slavery and concentration camps and so on...

 

[gluadys]

The Word of God (including all of Genesis) is a double-edge sword. If it can't cut mustard I don't know how it is going to cut into the heart's of evil men.

Surely it is the spiritual revelation which cuts to the heart, not its primitive science. The significant message of Genesis is not changed because the writer didn't know about quarks.

 

[gluadys]

I do, here it is:

Ro. 8:19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God
to be revealed.
Ro. 8:20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
Ro. 8:21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Ro. 8:22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Ro. 8:23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Amen.

Just what physical changes in nature do you think this passage speaks of?

 

[Calminian]

Surely it is the spiritual revelation which cuts to the heart, not its primitive science. The significant message of Genesis is not changed because the writer didn't know about quarks.

Uh, the writer was God.

 

[PaladinValer]

/me sees gluadys and raises $100,000 more

 

[gluadys]

Uh, the writer was God.

No. The one who inspired the writers was God. The writers were human.

 

[PaladinValer]

God didn't write a thing. That was humanity.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I didn't ask what noll thought I asked what you thought. Noll doesn't seem to think it's important to go to scripture to learn the meaning of words. The abolitionists were correct. Adapting modern meanings to old words will do nothing but cause confusion and even harm. This is a bad hermeneutical approach. A good hermeneutic would be to find out what the author actually meant by that word. This still a literal approach. Had early american christians done this perhaps slavery wouldn't have become so widespread.

So rmwII, do you personally believe there was a difference between biblical and early american slavery? Do you personally believe it was right for early american christians to adapt a modern meaning to it?

it is my active study area, i have a Sunday School class to teach this summer on the topic, hence its importance to me. i'd ask you to overlook my enthusiasm for the topic...

Noll is a believing Christian, conservative and Biblical in his approach to Scripture. The best of a small group of competent historians i feel that way about. You can see how he struggles with the historical material and strives to do justice to both special and general revelation.

i don't have a lot of conclusions at this point in my study on the topic. The abolitionists where not, as a whole, either conservative in their approach to Scripture nor often professing Christians. The proslavery theologians in the South, OTOH, are the direct denominational and theological ancestors of my particular church so all natural inclinations are often towards them.

Part of the answer is certainly in recognizing Noll's option 3, that southern slavery != OT/NT slavery, however this answer in no way pursues the more important issue of "does the Scriptures teach that slavery is wrong?" It only gets you to the point of "a particular manifestation of slavery was unBiblical". All the hermeneutical questions still remain.
(as an aside, this is the stage that some theologians reached in the south in the last years of the war, giving rise to the humanization of slavery movement)

So there is this progression of question/answer pairs that we pose to Scripture.
is southern slavery Biblical?
the answer if you concentrate on the word-slavery- is that the details of the system are or are not Biblical, but you don't tackle the more difficult question of applying the larger question:
is slavery, as a general principle Biblical?

we have the same analogous question in the ced debate.
how long are the days in Gen 1?
24 hrs or not?
our concentration, our analysis would be either "AiG" or "Reasons to Believe" type. It would involve the meaning of the words, in the context of the culture they were first addressed to. However the discussion has another much higher level:
What is the meaning of Gen 1-5 in the context of modern science?
it is the analgous question to is slavery a Biblical principle, a high order ideological question, not one at the level of words and meaning but rather one at the highest level of ultimate meaning and how the Scriptures create elements and structures in our world view.
interestingly the higher level question was where the abolitionist usually operated, however their conservative proslavery opponents operated a level lower on the meaning of words. Hence they, like YEC and OEC are often using the same words but just talking past each other, being on substantially different levels.

That is why i appreciate, both the analogy to geocentricism that vance pursues and the analogy of slavery that i am currently studying. Both analogies are to the Creation-evolution debate and how we interrelate what we know from the world to our study of Scripture, basically building and using a hermeneutic. It is this hermeneutical task that i am interested in understanding more about.

 

[Calminian]

it is my active study area, i have a Sunday School class to teach this summer on the topic, hence its importance to me. i'd ask you to overlook my enthusiasm for the topic...

Noll is a believing Christian, conservative and Biblical in his approach to Scripture. The best of a small group of competent historians i feel that way about. You can see how he struggles with the historical material and strives to do justice to both special and general revelation.

i don't have a lot of conclusions at this point in my study on the topic. The abolitionists where not, as a whole, either conservative in their approach to Scripture nor often professing Christians. The proslavery theologians in the South, OTOH, are the direct denominational and theological ancestors of my particular church so all natural inclinations are often towards them.

Sometimes historical theologians are wrong and we need to speak up about it. Your reluctance to do so is puzzling. Noll was sincere and Noll was wrong. It's no wonder black christian americans are still wary. A simple study of O.T. slavery legislation and ANE culture will show you the fallacy many early american christians made in this area. In fact I don't even think your own denomination supports this idea of early american slavery being the literal teaching of scripture.

But I guess if you were to admit this your analogy would fall flat.

Then you'd have to fall back on the fallacious geocentrism argument. But did you know that Vance has already admitted a literal reading of the Bible does not support geocentrism. Surprise!

Part of the answer is certainly in recognizing Noll's option 3, that southern slavery != OT/NT slavery, however this answer in no way pursues the more important issue of "does the Scriptures teach that slavery is wrong?" It only gets you to the point of "a particular manifestation of slavery was unBiblical".

This is correct and what the Bible teaches. But this definition of slavery is much closer to an employee-employer relationship than early american slavery. It’s not the equivalent of course, but certainly not in harmony with the evil that early america practiced.

is southern slavery Biblical?
the answer if you concentrate on the word-slavery- is that the details of the system are or are not Biblical, but you don't tackle the more difficult question of applying the larger question:
is slavery, as a general principle Biblical?

Of course it is. In fact we used to make prisoners in the US do labor until relatively recently. Now we give them TVs and even sex-change operations (or at least were are considering it). I say we get back to the Bible.

 

[Ceris]

MOD HAT ON

Ok, I've read the last few pages of this thread twice and I still can't figure out how it exactly went off topic, but this thread is waaaaay of topic. So I'm gonna everyone here two things:

1) Get back on topic - if you want to dicuss politics or other stuff like that, take it to those forums. We have lots of forums here at CF, there's no need for this stuff to be debated in Origins Theology.

2) Behave. This forum is for debate, not belittling - got it? Those you're debating are your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. We are supposed to love one another as Christ has loved us. So stop, pause, and ponder for a second what you've typed - is the words that I have written something that loves others as Christ has loved me? Think about it.

MOD HAT OFF

 

[shernren]

I don't know if this willl be on point or not.

Calminian let me see if I can try to explain this to you. The precise reason we agree with you that the Bible does not support slavery is because God has revealed through the forces of history and through the guidance of the church's theology that slavery American-style is wrong. Way wrong. No bones about that.

But, what did the position look like before we had all this evidence that no, our Bible's slavery passages don't support slavery? I do not exactly know the history, but it seems from rmswilliams that there were a group of people who are thinking the way we are now, that slavery in the Bible was not the American slavery and one could not sanction the other: and what were the other Christians doing? Seems like they were bashing up the abolitionists for being liberal and non-literal to the Word of God, for disrespecting the two-edged sword of the Spirit.

Sound familiar?

We do not have concrete hermeneutical evidence yet over the origins issue, over whether these passages are to be treated literally or not. So what would happen if somehow, one day, God booms down with a loud voice "No, I was not writing about a literal 6-day 6000 years ago creation. Sorry for the misunderstanding but my Word is still true and you have to consider how on earth you read it wrong!" Guess what? we'd be arguing that the creation of scripture is not creation as we understand it, that truth in scripture may be more complex than cut-and-dried historical truth, etc.

Exactly the way we argue today that scripture does not support geocentrism and slavery: because we have evidence to the contrary.

I hope I've helped you understand the point of the slavery-hermeneutics posts.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

i'm kindof discouraged that neither vance's geocentricism nor my recent slavery analogies seem to interest people. perhaps i am just plain unclear in presentation.

from the OP.

Theistic Evolution is Unbiblical!

Evolution is not compatible with the Bible.


These are very high level, major principle type of analysis. This is not low level, textual criticism, nor first or second level phrase and sentence meaning type of statements. These refer to the principles, the general meaning, the very tenor of the Bible. These high order principles are built out of Scripture via the process of hermeneutics under the control of exegetical ideas.

Where is Scripture inspired?
at the word level?, at the sentence level?, at some level of meaning? at the highest levels of major principles?

It is this kind of questions that are involved in all 3 debates: geocentricism, slavery, age of the earth. It is to these exegetical principles and to their underlying hermeneutical principles that we must look for answers.

that is why the ced debate talks so much about literal and figurative. or genre of literature, or was Adam an historical being. These are hermeneutical questions, these are the controlling principles that each of us bring to the text that conservatives claim are derived from the text.

all 3 debates show a surprising number of similiarities. One very interesting one is that the more liberal group make reference to higher order principles and the more conservative make reference to textual matters. Exactly the same thing is very evident in the slavery debate of the last century. Abolitionists in particular argued from very general principles: love of neighbor, the truth shall make you free, all men are created free. they very seldom made reference to particular verses or texts. OTOH the southern conservatives only argued from the very text.

So is TE compatible with the Scriptures or not?
how do you decide? line up darwin and genesis and go through each text side by side? that is foolish, meaning must be 'extracted' from each and the meanings compared.

and this is where past battles like slavery and geocentricism can help, they can illuminate this process of understanding the meaning of the Bible, how we do exegesis and the crucial errors that have been made in the past.

in particular, the more conservative side of each of these issues makes the much better textual case, but in both geocentricism and slavery, with only a small minority continuing to defend either, the entire Church has embraced the more liberal, higher principle argument. Why? what makes these principles more important than the text itself?

another thing that makes them interesting analogies to the CED debate is that we have both the history and writings of the church as it defended geocentricism and slavery, even those remnant communities that still do, and we can see that their arguments are exactly the same ones posed by AiG and the YECists towards TE and OEC. even to the point of using the very same names-compromises, capitulation, liberal. etc.

that is the serve vance has consistently done for this group in quoting the remnant geocentrics and how they respond to the group to their immediate right-the YECs.

it is also the continual cry from the South addressed to the northern churches, you have capitulated to the spirit of the times, to the french revolution's doctrine of the equality of all mankind, in the face of the clear Biblical principles of hierarchical authority etc.....

remove a few key words and you can not tell if it is a southern theologian directed at a northern abolitionist, a current geocentric telling AiG that it has capitualated to the godless copernicanism, or AiG writing the 10 things that are wrong with TE. they are that closely analogous arguments.

....

 

[Biliskner]

here is another interesting essay that points to a particular hermeneutic as being the key point in the defense of Southern slavery


from: http://www.christianethicstoday.com...ons of Slavery By William E. Hull_043_05_.htm


and it has everything to do with the current discussion, for it is the same hermeneutic that is leading believers astray on the creation-evolution-design issues.

You have got to be kidding me.

Same sex marriage is ok. I mean, if I take the Bible allergorically, then I can marry my mum and have kids. I mean, the Bible does say "some stuff" about this kind of stuff but this stuff isn't supposed to be taken literally and plus it's in the OT kind of stuff anyway. So stuff all literalism and tear this divine Word apart. Stuff you all 'cos I'm right and you're all wrong. This stuff is causing division in the church so we can't talk about it, I mean, how would God know anyhow, how long to make the world, 2 seconds or 2 million years and all in all we're not supposed to know so stop talking about it, creationist fads. It's all the same stuff correct? I mean, the people who lived pre-Darwinian 17th C were all stuffed in the head, I mean, believing in 6,000 year old Earth? bah! What dumb stuff.

Case closed.
Evolution wins.


For those a little bit more serious,... here is a link.

You TEs like hermeneutics. Any Hebrew linguists out there?

www . grisda.org/origins/21005.htm

Let me know your thoughts. I especially like the ordinal numbering "phenomena" in the text of Genesis 1 (also the "evening and morning", but not as much)

 

[Biliskner]

The Word of God (including all of Genesis) is a double-edge sword. If it can't cut mustard I don't know how it is going to cut into the heart's of evil men.

Surely it is the spiritual revelation which cuts to the heart, not its primitive science. The significant message of Genesis is not changed because the writer didn't know about quarks.

LOL - someone replied to the Holy Spirit chopping mustard.

 

[Biliskner]

Ro. 8:19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God
to be revealed.
Ro. 8:20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
Ro. 8:21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
Ro. 8:22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Ro. 8:23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Just what physical changes in nature do you think this passage speaks of?

errrr....

Ro. 8:21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

creation changed in physical nature 'cos in the beginning nothing was made to die (ie: no death in the world). now that sin is in the world, God subjected the creation to the "bondage and decay". and thus it "eagerly" awaits restoration.

why would creation wait for restoration if death was around before Adam sinned? that makes no sense.

questions for you:

HOW do you interpret that passage of Romans?
do you believe that you'll live forever in heaven?
do you believe there will be any death and decay?
How do you deal with Romans 5:12

If you answer these 4 questions succinctly, I'll be a happy chappy (very happy chappy.)