Re: Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered

Hi Jack

A few thoughts occurred to me.

1. In some cases I have made an impact on YEC's by being patient enough
with them that they eventually had to accept that I am a Christian. I
can't say any of them have abandoned YECism because of my efforts, but
at least they no longer automatically write off anyone claiming to be a
Christian who accepts evolution.

2. The way I respond to reasoning like that presented below --
interpreting Jesus' use of examples from the OT as validating the
literal sense of the accounts -- is that Jesus was referring to shared
knowledge, and that whether it was literally true or or true in some
other sense, the pertinent points are 1) That it was shared knowledge
and thus could be used easily for teaching, and 2) that God ordained
that the OT accounts be included in Scripture for teaching.

On Wednesday, December 17, 2003, at 03:16 PM, Jack Haas wrote:

> Greetings to the group.
>  
> I offer the following quote as all too typical of the way a large
> segment of the church regards scripture and nature:
> _______________________________
>  
> "...trust the Bible, as Jesus did (‘it is written’; ‘Scripture cannot
> be broken’ John 10:35). And Jesus never separated biblical morality
> from biblical history. Indeed, Jesus told Nicodemus (John 3:12): ‘I
> have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then
> will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?’ If Jesus was wrong
> about earthly things (like a recent creation and a global Flood—Luke
> 17:26–27), why should we believe what He says about heavenly things?
> And in the passage above, Jesus taught about the moral issue of
> marriage by connecting it with the fact of the creation of man and
> woman as Genesis says! The Sabbath commandment, another moral issue,
> was given explicitly because God created the heavens and earth in six
> normal-length days and ‘rested’ on the seventh day (Exodus 20:8–11).
> If you compromise the Bible, then what is to stop you from
> compromising Christ? We all need to learn to not take our views to the
> Bible but let the Bible dictate what our views should be. God is never
> wrong, so we should trust Him. If we elevate our words to be equal to
> God’s then we are trying to equate ourselves with God. If we regard
> ‘nature’ as the ‘67th book of the Bible’, as Dr **** teaches this
> means that man’s fallible science, which tells us of ‘nature’, has
> been elevated to the status of Scripture. That’s the problem. Remember
> John 1:1-3."
> __________________
>  
> Can any of you suggest an approach (or better have had success with an
> approach) that can move such believers from this "wooden" take on
> God's word?   Or, perhaps, what moved you from this view?
>  
> I'm preparing a collection of FAQs related to our interests from the
> list and other resources. (Names always deleted)
>  
> Thank you.
>  
> Jack Haas
>
Bill Hamilton Rochester, MI 248 652 4148
Received on Wed Dec 17 17:38:35 2003