Re: concordance & genesis (edited)

"D. F. Siemens, Jr." wrote:
> Peter,
> Since I doubt that we will come closer together, this will be my last
> post on the topic. I understand the motivation behind your view: The
> Bible speaks according to what science allows, and must be interpreted to
> demonstrate this meaning.

David,
No, I am sorry, you haven't understood _at all_. I shall try to explain
it once more. If you are not interested, just skip it - I don't expect
an answer.

I have come to realize that a biblical text is not like a mathematical
formula which has exactly one correct reading. Language has a certain
flexibility, and a word or expression often has a (sometimes somewhat
fuzzy) set of related meanings. Knowledge of the immediate and even
wider context is required to get at the meaning intended by the author.
In the great majority of cases, a human author writes in order to
address a specific topic of current interest and wants to communicate a
precise statement of an idea he or she has in mind. In such a case,
there is precisely one correct understanding of the text written, namely
the one as closely in accordance with the writer's intention as
possible.

When we are looking at biblical texts, however, an additional factor has
to be taken into consideration: the question is no longer primarily what
the writer's intention was, but what God wants to communicate. There is
no need whatsoever to think of any kind of mechanical dictation, but
divine inspiration must imply some kind of guidance of the human
writer's thoughts and formulation work. God is (1) the creator of the
prophet's individual personality, (2) the one who graciously called him
and drew him to himself in faith, (3) the one who providentially
prepared him for his prophetic task, and (4) the one who causes him to
pronounce or write the text. God is certainly able to transmit through
the prophet to the text whatever he wanted to communicate, and however
he wanted to do it, without in any way forcing the prophet's
personality, knowledge, style, etc. Thus, the biblical text will be
written in the prophet's own words, style, way of thinking and
limitations. But it will contain everything God wanted him to express,
and nothing God did not want to be committed to the text. Such a
relationship may not be possible on a merely human level, but God's
possibilities and options go way beyond that, and biblical evidence
supports this view.

There is, in addition, a fundamental difference between a biblical text
and any other text, which has very far reaching consequences. A biblical
text is intended by God to be a message for _all_ people of _all_ times
and _all_ cultures, not just for the prophet's immediate audience. There
may be a particular aspect of the message restricted to the immediate
audience, but there is a wider import of the text for every later
reader. "For whatever was written in former days was written for our
instruction..." (Rom.15:4; cf. Rom.4:23; 1 Cor.9:10; 10:11).

It is well known that prophecies may have, or even often have, more than
one fulfillment, e.g. Isa.7:14. In Gal.4, Paul takes the historical
persons of Abraham and his family and applies an allegorical
interpretation to Sarah and Hagar. Does this theological application
annul the historicity of what occurred to Abraham's family? The fact
that an old Testament story has a theological meaning does not, by
itself, make that story non-historical. In stark contrast to a merely
human story, a biblical story may have more than one genuine, correct
interpretation. God can inspire a text, but he also is in a position to
providentially direct history of which the text is an account. This is
not possible with a merely human text. What, then is the "correct"
literary type and the "true" meaning of such a text? Is there always
only one correct answer?

A merely human text is fully dependent on the knowledge and culture of
the author. It can therefore be expected to occasionally contain errors
about things the author couldn't know. But in the case of a biblical
text, God might have his reasons for preventing grave errors to be
incorporated into his message by an ignorant prophet. He might be
looking ahead and know that many, in the future, might take offence at
such an error, with the consequence of their rejecting his offer of
grace. A mature believer might be able to adjust to such difficulties,
being solidly grounded in his Lord, but an unbeliever or a young
believer might not. It is sufficient that there is one huge stumbling
block (1 Pet.2:7-8), Jesus Christ crucified, that cannot be removed, but
must be placed in front of every human, so God might want to remove at
least the unnecessary stumbling blocks. Whether and to what extent he
really did do that is, of course, a question to be investigated, not
assumed one way or another.

My views regarding the relationship between the Bible and science
evolved in a perhaps uncommon way (particularly in comparison to what
appears to be "normal" in America). I grew up in a practically atheist
environment, with a minimal, but exclusively extremely liberal, social
church influence. Knowing nothing about the gospel or the Bible, I was
introduced to Christ by Inter-Varsity when I was a graduate chemistry
student. I became a Christian in 1955 and was immediately convinced of
the reality of Christ and the centrality of the Bible's testimony. The
question of evolution has been of great interest to me ever since, but
never brought me into any conflict with my newly found belief in
creation. I immediately was convinced that God created through
evolution, and that, through providence, he is the ultimate actor behind
any natural process.

But I didn't have any fixed commitment as to the details of this
relationship. My understanding and convictions about that grew and were
modified slowly. In the US in the early 60s, I was confronted with
antievolutionary claims by Christians, and after some intensive studies
of evolutionary (_not_ anti-!) literature, I concluded that they were
right with their claim that evolution (in the sense of common descent of
_all_ "kinds" including humans) was not proven and evolutionary
mechanisms inadequate. On the other hand, I did not find any valid
_biblical_ reasons against evolution, so I settled on the thought that
God must have somehow guided the whole process.

In those years, the question of the age of the earth and of life did not
come up at all in my considerations, probably due to my having absorbed
too much information about astronomy, geology and dating principles. In
my interpretation of Gen.1-2, I concentrated on theological and
psychological aspects, allowing for quite some pictorial and
anthropomorphic language and metaphors. But the idea that Gen.1 would
represent an ancient flat-earth-solid-sky mythical cosmology never
occurred to me. Being biblically and theologically "naive", I took it as
self-evident that the "firmament" was not any more solid than what we
designate by the modern German word Firmament, i.e. the sky, that the
"water above it" consisted of clouds at any hight, and that the import
of the creation work on day 4 was to present the divine provision for
the orientation needs of some of the animals of days 5 and 6, by means
of the luminaries which originated much earlier.

It was obvious to me that the creation of humans in Gen.1 must be a
spiritual reality, therefore corresponding to a scientifically invisible
act of God into an evolutionary development. At that time, I didn't
worry about the question whether there might have been humans, in the
biblical sense, before Adam (who, according to what follows in Genesis,
must have lived after about 10,000 BC if, indeed, he was historical).
Only in the early 80s, when I read Claeys, K. (1979), "Die Bibel
bestätigt das Weltbild der Naturwissen-schaft" (Christiana-Verlag, Stein
am Rhein, Switzerland; ISBN 3-7171-0745-3), I encountered the idea that
Gen.2:7 might be talking about something different from 1:27, that there
might have been Preadamites, and that the Hebrew text of Gen.1-2 might
even suggest evolution. At the same time, I stumbled across a German
rehash of American YEC ideas and was flabbergasted about the scientific
nonsense and irresponsible science quotation practice it contained.
Furthermore, archeological evidence for a plausibly spiritual nature of
Homo sapiens much earlier than 10,000 BC began accumulating.

A major shift in my thinking about evolutionary evidence occurred very
recently, when I studied the new large-scale DNA sequence work
containing, among other interesting things, the evidence for shared
errors in the genomes of humans and apes, which, because they cannot be
explained by common needs, virtually prove a common descent.

With the linguistic help my younger friend Armin Held, I started working
up these questions about finding reasonable interpretations of science
and scripture which would allow for a harmonious, complementary picture
(published in PSCF in 1999). In the spectrum of available Genesis
interpretation, we wished to avoid the mistakes of both extremes, i.e.
YEC, on the one hand, and the mythologization introduced by the
destructive German "Higher Criticism", on the other hand. We found
pretty few views of authors taking some middle position conflicting
neither with science nor with a solid biblical theology. One was Newman,
R.C. & Eckelmann, H.J. (1989), "Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth"
(IBRI, Hatfield, PA; ISBN 0-944788-97-1). Only later I read Dick
Fischer's congenial "Origins Solution" (sorry, Dick, I should have paid
more attention to your 1993/1994 PSCF papers, "In search of the
historical Adam").

We presented a specific interpretation of Gen.1-2 largely satisfying our
requirements. We remain open for any reasoned modifications, as our
faith is not supported by or committed to or dependent on any specific
interpretation. However, of course, we remain skeptical about claims
unsupported by sufficient evidence or contradicting basic biblical
theology. I am ready to deal with any fair objections to our
interpretation on a case-by-case basis.

> Consequently, you look for some more or less
> plausible meaning within the Hebrew vocabulary to match this commitment.

What I wrote above proves this accusation to be baseless.

> Such motivation underlies various interpretations that are held within
> the Christian community.

It is always risky to talk about others' presumed motivations.

> In contrast, I hold that the ancients held that
> things are as they appear to be, and wrote from that viewpoint.

I agree with the first half, but with the second half only for
extra-biblical writings, or for biblical ones qualified by the divine
inspirational "filter", cf. above.

> Thus, we
> know that there is no bowl overhead, that the blue sky appears simply
> because light of different frequencies is acted on differently by the
> atmosphere. To the ancients, it looked like a bowl so it was a bowl. When
> one sees the moon or Venus during the day, it looks like something
> attached to the blue bowl. As close as one can look toward the sun, it
> appears that the bowl holds it. To recognize that the celestial bodies
> are far beyond the stratosphere requires greater sophistication than the
> ancients possessed.

You would have to prove this last claim. You seem to overestimate our
intelligence in comparison with the ancients'. They certainly knew that
sun, moon, the 5 (?) planets known then, and stars move differently, so
there would have to be at least 8 different "bowls" if any, and these
would have to be full, not half, spheres around the earth, leaving open
the question of the earth's flatness or sphericity.

> I try to understand the passage as the ancients would
> have understood it, holding that that is what was revealed.

"What was revealed" is what God communicated. The primary content of
this would most certainly be theological. In this we agree. But I object
to your claim that God "revealed" a mythical, erroneous cosmology, even
if, for discussion's sake, the writer would have believed such a
cosmology. This implies that the text can be expected to have, in
addition, a possible interpretation compatible with reality.

> This fits the
> standard I find in the traditional confessions: scripture presents the
> rule for faith and practice, or all that is needed for salvation.

This standard also expresses what I believe.

> This is
> a position I have been forced to over more than 50 years by the evidence,
> step by grudging step, for I was taught YEC. I am committed to making my
> views conform to the scriptures rather than fitting the scriptures to
> what I want them to say.
> Dave

I fully agree with your last sentence.
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)