Re: A profound disturbance found in Yak butter.

Glenn,
As another exYEC, I think I have some responses relevant to your
questions. The first is that the Christian revelation is progressive,
from the early Hebrews through the prophets to the apostles, with the
life, death and resurrection of Christ central to the message. We know
what neither early Hebrews nor Maccabean Jews could know. Additionally,
the way they may have understood what they had is not necessarily the way
we should understand it. In contrast, the several tales you note (in the
snipped portion) do not claim to be an ongoing revelation. I doubt that
any of the mythologies are the basis for serious philosophical
discussions.

Second, things are not quite as we learned them in Sunday school.
Consider the difference between Joshua and Judges. In Joshua, almost
everything went forward without a hitch. The land was conquered. There
was no idolatry mentioned among the tribes. Judges tells a different
story of continued battles, idolatry, one mess after another. One of the
great heroes was Jerubbaal, nicknamed Gideon. Recall that he broke up the
local idols. His son was a catastrophe. The situation during the time of
the prophets seems similar. There was the Temple, but a lot more was
going on. The record we have does not tell us everything. A lot of it is
slanted.

Finally, when we come to Christ, we have a solid historical basis for our
theology. It would be there if virtually nothing of the Old Testament
remained. I note that many tribes have only a New Testament in their
language. Indeed, some have only a single gospel, but they've gotten the
message of salvation.
Dave

On Sat, 27 May 2006 09:15:26 -0400 <glennmorton@entouch.net> writes:
The thread on Hugh Ross (who is great in astronomy but lousy on almost
anything else—and Rana’s book about Adam which is entirely laughable)
made me think once again about what it is that makes Christianity true.
Clearly, it is the resurrection, but it isn’t only that. It is
CONCORDISM with the observable facts. If everything written about nature
in the Bible is false, then one must begin to question whether the
resurrection is real as well because a book that can’t get anything
right must be doubted. Logic dictates that. Probability dictates that.
How could one possibly believe a book which talks about non-existent
people, non-existent empires, non-scientific concepts and then turn
around and say that the thing teaches ‘true theology’?

Debbie Mann said some things which are believed by many in Christianity.
She said:

>>>“'The Bible was written as an instruction book.' has been said many
times.
But, the restatement seems completely different.
The Bible has perfect knowledge of man.”<<<
Now, one can believe what one wants but when someone says something
categorical like this, one is tempted to ask, “What is the evidence for
such an assertion that the Bible has perfect knowledge of man?”
Wouldn’t one require some concordance of data with that assertion? The
fidiest wouldn’t; the skeptic would.
And when people say that the Bible teaches the true theology—how do we
know that? What evidence can we muster to defend that belief? Such an
epistemological situation reminds me of two cultures I have encountered
over the past two months of travel in China.
I may be picking up again where I left this list, but the issue of how
one can tell that the Bible is telling the truth about something is a
very important epistemological issue even if many on this board don’t
think it is important or chose to merely believe what they want
regardless of the problems. Their disbelief doesn’t make the importance
any less, especially if one doesn’t say apriori that Christianity is
automatically true and therefore anything it says must be true. Because
of this tautological approach to Christian apologetics, I have been
interested in how to break out of the tautology.
<BIG snip>
Received on Sat May 27 15:22:19 2006