"First, what I haven't given up on is the standard of truth. It wouldn't
bother me if Noah took 15 pair of animals, or if something like that, so I
am not an inerrantist."
I thought I had made that clear in my post, but I guess I hadn't, so let me
rephrase. I KNOW you are not an inerrantist, but your objections to my
compromise indicate that, like YEC, you still believe there MUST be some
sort of objective scientific/historical truth in Genesis that can be tested
against physical reality, otherwise you can't believe in Christ. Perhaps
it's a matter of education; as someone raised in a mainstream church I was
never taught that, so I see no conflict in this issue, whereas your
fundamentalist upbringing taught you that there was a conflict. Even so,
when you converted to a more liberal outlook, you nonetheless clung to a few
fundamentalist tenets to keep yourself psychologically grounded in your old
comforting beliefs as you explored dangerous new territory. This is one of
them. Some day you may decide you can finally abandon these last vestiges
of your former YEC beliefs, but until then I feel that they may distort your
perception if you cling to them too hard.
"All parents around the world representing all religions, tell their kids
that their religion is true. But they all can't be true."
If there is only one God (which I believe) then either He operates through
only one religion or He operates through all. If He operates only through
one, then it is easy to account for all the doctrinal and theological
differences between all the religions (man's false concepts vs.. God's
revealed truth). If, however, God operates through all, then this question
becomes more difficult. For me there are three possible solutions: 1) God
is a trickster, like Loki or Coyote, and is playing a massive joke on us
all; 2) God tells one message to everyone, but the society He is telling it
to interprets it within its own heritage; or 3) God tells each society only
part of the message, in which case we are expected to compare notes and
figure out the whole message for ourselves. I reject Option 1 (though I
cannot rule it out entirely), but I tend to oscillate between Options 2 and
3. I stay a Christian out of habit and to honor my parents, but I do not
reject what truths other religions may have to teach me. In all this, I am
not seeking a path to God, because He's always been with me; instead I am
trying to figure out what He is trying to tell me, and if Christianity has
some answers but not others, I will look for those other answers elsewhere.
As such, all religions may in fact be true at their core, though certainly
not in their details.
"If they are 2 separate religious accounts artificially put together, then
they don't really belong together and they probably were inspired by
different gods/people. And I am not interested in worshipping in a religion
inspired by people alone."
And I'm not asking you to. But this objection is based on the assumption
that different religions are based on different gods, whereas they could be
based on the same God (Who never changes) being forced to work with
different groups of people (who change constantly). The separate accounts
were written by people from very different cultural backgrounds and were
strung together even though they don't really belong together. But that
does not invalidate the idea that God inspired them both, and so therefore
they contain important spiritual truths to be uncovered.
"Then we should reject it utterly if it isn't the work of God."
I call that the "baby with the bathwater" approach to religious study:
throwing out everything simply because of one objectionable point. When I
said that the OT is not the work of God, I meant He didn't write it, either
personally or through human proxies, nor did He compose it. However, He did
inspire it and He certainly created the central message the human writers
were meant to convey. He just left it up to them to tell it in their own
words. So the writers were not "creating" God in their own image; instead
they personified God in a way that they and their readers could understand,
so as to make the message more acceptable.
"What gets me about this approach is this....If it is OK for the OT writers
to incorporate KNOW FALSEHOODS into their book because it advanced their
theological position, then consistency demands that it MUST BE ALRIGHT FOR
YECS TO TEACH FALSE THINGS TO ADVANCE THEIR THEOLOGICAL POSITION. What is
good for the goose must be good for the gander. Your position leads to the
place where it is OK for the OT to be fiction but not OK for the YEC books
to be fiction."
There are at least two major differences between YEC and the OT authors.
One is motive; the other is method. The motive of the OT authors was to
disseminate the message of God for the benefit of mankind and the greater
Glory or God, not for their own benefit of glory. The motive of the YEC, on
the other hand, is to promote a narrow, historically literalistic
interpretation of Genesis for their own benefit and glory, mainly to acquire
worldly power. Certainly the rank and file believe otherwise, but the
leadership knows exactly what it's doing. As to method, YEC have to
deliberately promote falsehoods, because they have no facts. Again, the
rank and file may believe otherwise, but again the leadership knows exactly
what it's doing.
The method of the OT authors is not quite so straight forward. As
horrendous as it might sound to some on this list, I stand by my claim that
the authors knowingly used myths and legends to personify the message they
were trying to relate. But then we Americans do much the same thing. Take
the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. Most Americans know
it's not true, but they retell it, they promote it, they even teach it to
their kids as fact. Why would they do that if they know it's not true?
Because they believe the story personifies an aspect of the character of the
Founding Father that is also an aspect of the overall character of America
as well: honesty. America occasionally does wrong things, but it always
admits its mistakes and make restitution. Of course, this belief flies in
the face of reality, but most Americans are willing to believe that the
fault lies with politicians who do the expedient rather than what is right.
Similarly the OT authors also knowingly used myths and legends to personify
the message of God they were trying to get out. As Richard Shenkman put it,
"The danger is not that we have myths. They tell us who we are and what we
cherish and all people have them. The danger is hiding from the fact that
they are myths." [R Shenkman _"I Love Paul Revere, Whether He Rode or Not"_
HarperCollins 1991 pg.. xii.]
"Unfortunately, I live in a world that has a large amount of objective
reality. What you are offering is the willingness to live in two worlds,
one without any objective reality (theology) and the other with it."
Who says that theology has no objective reality? Its reality is different
from that of scientific reality, but no less objective. You simply use a
different method to find that reality. Many theologians, including St.
Augustine, and many Christian scientists, such as Galileo, have acknowledged
the existence of these two worlds and their separate methodologies, while
not denying that either is objective. They even went so far as to claim
that when the two worlds conflict, we should believe the natural world.
It's only modern literalist fundamentalists who insist that these two worlds
are really one and that Biblical theology must be testable against
scientific reality.
"I certainly didn't think that, and I am not doing it either. But the issue
of how to interpret the relationship between reality and theology is
certainly worthy of debate. :-)"
Granted, but the real issue is how to interpret the relationship between
_science_ and theology. Whatever reality is, it will be a mixture of both
scientific reality and theological reality; to claim that scientific reality
alone is the standard by which everything else is to be compared smacks
strongly of scientism.
"It is not God's anger that I am worried about here. It is his truthfulness
and his reality. He must be real to be angry. And if he is real he must be
capable of influencing this world and not merely be the
creation/anthropomorphism of frightened humanity."
You'll get no argument from me here.
Kevin L. O'Brien