You wrote in part:
> (3) I make no apologies for raising these issues again. The Flood
> narrative provides the Christian with a real opportunity to demonstrate
> where his true loyalties lie. I suggest the onus is on those who believe
> the Flood to be local to bring forward some better evidence for that
> view than currently exists.
>
> Glenn, you claim to be a serious student of the Word of God, but as I
> see it, for you, it is the doctrine of evolution that ever 'calls the
> tune'! Am I not correct?
>
The issue here is to what extent should extra-Biblical data constrain our
understanding of the Biblical text? This is particularly in the area of
world picture, rather than world view.
Consider the Biblical cosmology. It is clearly flat earth, with
foundations, a hard dome or disk like sky. Above the sky is the primal
ocean. This world picture was not valid after about the 4th century BC.
Augustine in his various commentaries on Genesis grapples with this, because
the flat earth cosmology of Genesis does not fit his own scientific
cosmology (geocentric, but with a spherical earth). Indeed, along with
anthropomorphisms in language about God, it was used by groups such as the
Manichees, to attack Christianity as being beneath intelligent
consideration. Augustine's approach was that God "accommodated" His
revelation to the limited understand of the hearers. Was Augustine (and
ourselves) wrong to accept a not flat earth cosmology?
Similarly, passages such as Psalm 93: 1 and 96:10 ("the earth is set firmly
in its place and cannot be moved" GNB) were advanced in defence of
geocentric cosmologies until the time of Galileo. The intervention of the
astronomical telescope changed our interpretation of this passage once and
for all. New interpretations saw the passage as being accommodated to the
world picture of the time, or using figurative language. Once again, are we
wrong to interpret this passage as using picture language, and not
scientific? After all in these two verses the fixity of the earth is linked
to God sovereignty, not a theology to be trifled with.
On what way is our handling of the world picture of Genesis 1-11 (and there
are probably several different world pictures in these chapters) different
from they way we have dealt with the cosmological architecture pictured in
the Bible? I am not talking about the basic theology here. That is a very
different issue, and remains much more constant, despite the changing world
pictures of the hearers and exegetes. I would argue that the world view of
the Bible (the divine revelation) is incarnate (if you will) within the
world picture of the Bible. If it were otherwise how could it be
intelligible to the first hears? I can just imagine Moses saying 'And God
said "Let the accreting earth undergo siderophile-lithophile segregation
under conditions of low Eh, resulting in core formation, and it was so"'.
The chances of the first hearers learning the real teaching of Genesis (that
God is sovereign over creation that it is good, and humanity is God's
steward of the creation) would be nil. This approach to the Bible and extra
Biblical knowledge has been maintained and taught by theologians such as
Augustine and Calvin and many others, so it is hardly original or
unorthodox.
God Bless
Jonathan