Inspiration and Authority (was: Non-truths that do not transform)

Hi Christopher,

You wrote (3rd May):

So obviously you accept geocentricism, unless you want to reject the authority of
the Bible, or rather what you think is the authority of the Bible.

He established the earth upon its foundations, so that it will not totter, forever and ever.
- Psalm 104:5

The world is firmly established, it will not be moved.
- Psalm 93:1 & 1 Chronicles 16:30

For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he set the world on them.
- 1 Samuel 2:8

Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the
Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, sun stand
thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, moon upon Ajalon - Joshua 10:12

Note that Joshua tells the sun to stop moving, not the earth to stop rotating on its
axis. If you reject this, then you are contradicting your own dogmatic interpretation
of Sola Scripture, and using modern science.

I can't agree with your suggestion that 'geocentrism' and 'flat earth' are _taught_ in the Scriptures for, in my view,
neither has the clear backing of divine authority (for reasons that I outline below). However, regarding the former (and
having in mind the unexpected outcome of the Michelson-Morley experiments), I am prepared to believe that
geocentrism might conceivably be true, for I am not aware of any published refutation of that possibility. The latter, of
course, I reject out of hand.

The Apostle Paul states categorically that "All scripture is given by inspiration of God..." - but offers no explanation
as to how this process works out in practice. Nevertheless, as Christians, I believe it is important that we seriously
consider this matter and hammer out some reasonable suggestions. So let me first offer the view that God did not
_usually_ dictate words directly to His chosen authors. However, there are, notable instances of His so doing - as, for
example, the Creation Narrative, parts of the Flood Narrative, the form of the High Priest's breastplate, the Ten Commandments, and so on. But outside of these it appears that those who received such _inspiration_ were free to
express themselves naturally. In my view, we must therefore expect there to be some _noise_ in the biblical text as, for example, evidence of the writer's world view and his understanding of the cosmos (most probably that generally held by the people of his day). I suggest it is hardly reasonable that these views of the human author should be regarded as part of the _divine message_, and completely agree with whoever it was who recently wrote words to the effect, "The Bible is not a
scientific textbook."

As I see it, to reduce the possibility of error we need to read God's Word _honestly_, _intelligently_ and with an
_open mind_. I say this because in my experience many people (Christians included!) appear to delight in exposing
some supposed error in the scriptural text. (This, of course, should cause little surprise because, according to this same
Book, we are all enemies of God - even after conversion, apparently.) Let me give you an example of this less-than-
candid approach (brought to the attention of this forum a year or so ago).

 It concerns 1Kings 7:23 where some details of Solomon's 'molten sea' are provided - this taking the form of a large cylindrical brazen laver intended to meet the requirements of temple worship. On the basis of this description many people (Jews and Christians included) have been led to understand that the temple builders assumed the value of the universal constant _pi_ to be 3 rather than 3.14159... and conclude that the Scriptures must therefore be unreliable. However, in their haste to reach this
conclusion, they ignore a further significant detail given a few verses later, viz "And it (the cylindrical laver) was an
handbreadth thick..." In other words, as one might have expected, this cylinder has both internal and external
diameters (d and D, say) and internal and external circumferences (c and C, say). Whilst c/d = C/D = 3, the
ambiguity built into the text allows us to say C/d = 3.14... Further, it would indeed be very strange if an engineer of
Solomon's day, with both Egypt and Babylon on his doorstep, would readily tolerate an error of 4.5% in the value of
_pi_ .

In my view, such display of _wilful ignorance_ is deplorable and betrays the real intentions of those who indulge in it.

Finally, I suggest we can never conclude that our Sovereign Creator has made mistakes or has sought to mislead in
His solemn revelation to man - for this would destroy the basis of our Christian faith - and, in particular, would raise
serious doubts about what has been accomplished on our behalf at Calvary.

Vernon
www.otherbiblecode.com
Received on Mon May 9 17:30:17 2005