Re: Being a human

I'd like to second George on this--from a somewhat different perspective. Glenn seems to be seeking a kind of proof of God in a concordance between science and Scripture. But "no sign shall be given to them" except the witness of the Church to Christ's life, works, crucifixion and resurrection, and the continuing testimony of the Spirit through God's people.

God witnesses to himself through the world despite the best efforts of some scientists to discredit that witness. But the important witness is spiritual, within you. Only if one has the internal witness can one really grasp the external witness.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: George Murphy<mailto:gmurphy@raex.com>
  To: Randy Isaac<mailto:randyisaac@adelphia.net> ; asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 7:20 PM
  Subject: Re: Being a human

  2 points here.

  1) Theological considerations about human nature have been bedevilled by the idea that the primary source for those considerations should be human origins. In reality neither early Genesis nor paleontology tell us much about what God intends humanity to be. The pattern for genuine humanity is Christ, not Adam & Eve, homo erectus, &c.

  2) I understand why Glenn and others insist upon some type of concordist interpretation of Genesis but those demands stem from arbitrary - though very traditional - assumptions about the nature of scripture. Instead we should take seriously the equally traditional, and more profound, belief that the Incarnation of the Word provides the pattern which allows us to understand scripture. In particular, the divine kenosis involved in the Incarnation suggests that God's accomodation to cultural limitations in the inspiration of scripture is not just something that we're forced to expect but something we should expect. (Paul Seely has mentioned this idea of accomodation in some PSCF articles.) A brief essay of mine about this has just appeared in Covalence, the online bulletin of the ELCA Alliance on Faith, Science and Technology & can be found at http://www.elca.org/faithandscience/covalence/story/default.asp?Copyright=06-03-15&Author=murphy&Pages=1<http://www.elca.org/faithandscience/covalence/story/default.asp?Copyright=06-03-15&Author=murphy&Pages=1> .
   

  Shalom
  George
  http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/<http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/>
Received on Wed Mar 22 11:24:54 2006