Re: Let's start with the assumption that I am right!

It looks to me as if my remarks weren't getting set off from Glenn's text so
I've put mine in brackets {}.

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/

----- Original Message -----
From: <glennmorton@entouch.net>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>; "'George Murphy'" <gmurphy@raex.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 9:21 PM
Subject: Re: Let's start with the assumption that I am right!

On Sat Jun 3 20:12 , "George Murphy" sent:

>I'm going to focus on just the most important (right now) of the 3 points I
>made & your response.

>1st, you completely ignore the point that the accomodation of scripture can
>be based on a more fundamental theological claim. I know that you have
>little respect for theology & theologians but unfortunately that's what
>we're talking about right now - theology. You're simply in the wrong
>classroom.

What I admittedly have is little respect for circular logic, contradictory
assumptions,
ignoring contradictory observational evidence and tautological reasoning. I
also don't
like it when obviously logical deductions from the theologians OWN
assumptions are
ignored, you know, A=B, B=C, but A is not admitted to be equal to C. I
think when modern
theology engages in this type of behavior, they will end up being the death
of anything
real in religion. And as far as I am concerned both YEC and the standard OEC
view do
similar things--both believe in floods for which there is no evidence)

I often try to point out that if, on their scientific jobs, the members of
this list
engaged in the same kind of logical reasoning used here, their colleagues
would crucify
them.

We accept scientific statements because they CONCORD with reality. We don't
accept other
statements (like YEC statements concering the age of the earth) because THEY
DON'T
concord with reality. Science gave up on the YEC interpretation because it
doesn't
CONCORD to reality, yet theologians today don't want anything to CONCORD
with reality
because it might have to be tested and found wrong. I don't jump off cliffs
because I
beleive that the laws of physics (not to mention the molecular forces
holding together
the rocks below) will kill me. In other words, I live my life as if it
concords to
reality. Modern theology doesn't seem to care if anything concords to
reality.

But with theology, we dump all that and decide that things which don't
concord to reality
can still be true and deeply meaningful. That only works if one is dealing
ONLY within
the particular religion. If one looks up and see that there are other
religions who do
the very same thing and think we are nuts for believing that men rise from
the dead, it
become problematical to insist that things are true which don't concord to
reality.

{You'd have to give some examples of circular logic in the strict sense.
But if your going to call it "circular logic" when someone argues that
confidence in his/her initial presuppositions is strengthened a posteriori
by their ability to explain & make sense of phenomena, so be it. I call it
the way science generally works & a legitimate way for theology to work.

& it's wrong to say that modern theologians are uninterested in concord with
reality. Many of them are uninterested in concord of Gen.1-11 read as
historical narrative with the early history of the earth but that doesn't
mean that they are unconcerned with the history of Israel, the life, death &
resurrection of Jesus or agreement between their self-experience & the
law-gospel claims of the Christian faith. You have elevated the historicity
of early Genesis to THE issue which determines whether or not one is a
theological realist. That's far too narrow a view.}

Now, as to your first sentence, I read your article before replying. I
simply don't
think you have a persuasive case. If that is to be called ignoring your
point, so be it.
While you think I have little respect for theologians, maybe you have too
much faith in
the assumptions you use in that article. I disagree that there has been

{1st, the assumptions that I use in that article are things I've discussed
at length here, in numerous articles in PSCF & other places & in the book
that I refer to in the article. So I hope that at least long-time
participants on the asa list will realize that they aren't as sketchy as
that brief article might make them appear to those not familiar with
science-theology discussions. Those assumptions are that "true theology and
recognition of God are in the crucified Christ" (i.e., a theology of the
cross) & that the divine kenosis displayed in the Incarnation is a key to
understanding God's action in the world. I have a great deal of faith in
those claims, though I certainly don't claim to be inerrant in the way I
work out their implications. But if assumptions are to be questioned, those
are where we should start.

OTOH I really don't know what your basic theological position is. (& please
understand that that isn't meant as a questioning of your Christian
commitment.) I mean, what do you organize your thinking out of your faith
around? What's your basic theological principle for biblical
interpretation? It seems to me sometimes that it must be "God said it, I
can concordize it, that settles it" but maybe I'm wrong.}

1. any progress in the science/religion area over the past 25 years because
religion keeps
saying the same thing. There has, however, been scientific progress.

{Glenn, I know that you're very well read in a lot of fields but I don't
know how much that applies to theology. Correct me if I'm wrong but I
suspect that most of the theology you've read has been toward the
Evangelical-fundamentalist end of the spectrum & that much of it has to do
with origins issues. If that's the case then you need to look at some other
theologians. Of course in one sense Christian theology is supposed to "keep
saying the same thing." If it doesn't keep a strong connection with "the
same thing" then it's probably heretical. But the work of Barbour,
Torrance, McGrath, Polkinghorne, N. Murphy, Pannenberg, Santmire,
Cole-Turner, R.J Russell & T. Peters, just to mention a few, is enough to
show that what I said about progress in this area was true. & I'll have the
audacity to add some of my own work because 25 years ago no one was trying
to deal with science-theology dialogue in terms of Luther's theology of the
cross.}

2. I disagree that anyone will mistake you for 'a naive inerrantist'

{My primary audience for that article was ELCA folks & some of them might
have.}

3. I disagree that God is limited to acting 'within the limits of human
knowledge'. After
all, I don't know how a human dead 3 days can get up and walk around. I
don't know how a
man can walk on water, or through solid walls or water be turned into wine.
The
assummption that God limits himself to work within human understanding is
falsified by
events depicted the Bible itself.

{My phrase "if the Holy Spirit acted within the limits of human knowledge"
referred specifically to the process of inspiration of scripture. So the
examples you cite are irrelevant to the immediate argument.}

>2d, "accomodation" simply means that in the process of inspiration God
>allowed the biblical writers to use the contemporary understandings of
>science, history &c to the extent that it didn't obscure important aspects
>of revelation. That's the case regardless of the degree of accuracy of
>that
>history.

To take a Wittgensteinian view of your statement, you are using the word
'accommodation'
in a really odd way. What does it mean to accommodate a message when the
message doesn't
have to be changed at all? What is accommodated? Nothing.

In the case where no change in the message is used, we normally say
'communicated' rather
than 'accommodated'. This is why I don't like much of modern theology--it
does things
like this and acts as if something significant has been accomplished.

{This is much ado about not very much. I have no investment in the term
"accomodation" & use it simply because it's traditional. But the basic idea
is that God operates within the limits of contemporary human knowledge in
those fields. That's what needs to be discussed, not the meaning of the
word "accomodation."}

I would also like to know how you verify the part of the above paragraph
which reads:

"to the extent that it didn't obscure important aspects of revelation.'

I would contend that this is an ad hoc theological self-protection
conjecture. Why?
Because if human understanding did obscure the important aspects of
revelation we would
be wrong. This is the location of your theological assumption that we are
always right.
If we aren't right, then that ad hoc assumption can't be true. If we are
wrong, then God
DID let the contemporary understanding obscure the important theological
message. But we
could not possibly KNOW that God didn't let human understanding mess up the
revelation.
I would also say you have no evidence to back up this assertion. You have
no way to
verify the truth or falsity of that phrase.

Please tell me how you know that God didn't let human understanding
interfere with
theology when he clearly DID let it interfere in other ways.

I chose concordism and the use of verification of the biblical
interpretation to avoid
such ad hoc epistemological fixes.

{Yes, it's an assumption that scripture is the inspired witness to God's
revelation. That's connected with the basic claim I made earlier, that
God's self-revelation is in Christ. We wouldn't know of that if it weren't
for scripture. & the biblical witness to Christ receives confirmation from
the ability of its message to help us understand ourselves and our world.

& before you go postal over that, tell me how YOU prove that Jesus is Lord,
Savior &c? How do we get from the things you think show the historical
reliability of Genesis to the faith claim that Jesus is the Son of God -
without any "leaps of faith" or any illogical things of that sort?}

>> When the contemporary understandings of history &c were pretty
>accurate then the biblical accounts of the history &c were pretty accurate.
>The succession narrative (II Samuel 9-20 & I Kings 1-2) is "accomodated" to
>the knowledge of the events in questions of some (as is widely thought)
>eyewitnesses of the events in question & is probably quite accurate.
>Whether or not people usually call this "accomodation" is irrelevant.

>I'm afraid I don't know what your sentence about Roman history means.

To say that God accommodates his message to the knowledge of the day, when
the knowledge
of the day is quite accurate has little meaning for me and that is why I
used the Romans.
Accommodation is not a term one uses when the cultural knowledge is correct.
Using the
word in that way is an equivocation--changing the meaning in the middle of
the argument
and that is a logical fallacy.

{I've already made my point about "accomodation." Choose another word if
you wish. But I still don't know what you're talking about with the
Romans.}

I guess we are going for another go-round, huh?

{Your call.}
Received on Sun Jun 4 14:34:02 2006