RE: the box

Glenn Morton wrote:...
<< I view Genesis 1 as the pre-planning for the universe. The 'and it was
so' after so many of the verses is not what God said but what the Biblical
narrator said. By viewing Genesis 1 in this fashion, Genesis 2, the
supposed second account of creation is really several billion years later at
the time when mankind was created. Thus, the 'evidence' supporting YEC,
could be merely the wrong conclusion coupled with the fact that Theologians
seem to never think out of the box. >>

... to which George Murphy answered:
<< We've debated the interpretation of early Gen. before & there's probably
no point in rehasing that. But I must take exception to your last sentence
as a general statement about theologians. It depends a lot on what "box"
you're talking about. I suppose you can draw one that encompasses the views
of significant theologians & then say they never think outside it but that's
pretty artificial. & in reply one might say something about those who are
unable to think outside the box of concordism. >>

... and Glenn replied:
<< Ok, lets not rehash interpretation but I would say that there are
basically two boxes I see. YEC or figurative/allegorical/poetic. Those two
categories constitute about 99.9% of the interpretations I see when it comes
to Genesis 1-4

But, there may be merit in your criticism that some of us, me in particular,
might not be able to think out of the box of concordism. But then physics
has that problem as well. I don't know a single physical theory which isn't
concordistic in nature. Indeed, all science is concordistic. Only with
religion do we leave the realm of concordims. >>

PR: Glenn and I have had many disagreements, so I am very happy to say that
here I fully agree with him (his last two paragraphs, not his first one
above), and you may include me in his "box of concordism". I'm afraid his
estimate of 99.9% of "YEC or figurative/allegorical/poetic" may be not very
far from the mark. And he certainly is right in calling all science
"concordistic". I might add that I don't see any reason biblical
interpretation should not be "concordistic", as well. After all, we are
looking for truth. I suspect (and sometimes it's quite obvious) that the
critics of "concordism" in biblical interpretation often draw strawmen, e.g.
in claiming that "concordism" generally ignores things like literary genres
and cultural contexts.

Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)