Re: In defense of Paul Seely

*IVP [not the publishing house I would have expected to do this] has
published a series that collects patristic (and later?) commentaries on
various books of the bible.*

It's the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series, with Thomas Oden
as General Editor. Absolutely delightful and fascinating, and you can sign
up to have a new one delivered every month.

On 6/7/06, cmekve@aol.com <cmekve@aol.com> wrote:
>
> Bob-
> Very well stated. I've tried to make the same point in the past, but with
> notable lack of success. A hypothetical Concordist may find their
> cosmological science in Genesis, but their great-great...-great-grandparents
> would not because cosmology has changed. So then presumably our concordist
> predecessors would have been justified in rejecting Christianity.
> Concordism is always present-day oriented, which in and of itself virtually
> guarantees that at best it can only be right some of the time.
>
> Americans, and seemingly we scientists in particular, tend to be
> semiotically-challenged. The beauty of the "incarnated" stories so
> prevalent in Genesis is that although they are set in a particular cultural,
> their message is easily seen in almost any culture -- ancient or modern.
>
> IVP [not the publishing house I would have expected to do this] has
> published a series that collects patristic (and later?) commentaries on
> various books of the bible. I know they have one for Genesis, but I haven't
> seen it; nor can I remember the title of the series.
>
> Karl
> *************
> Karl V. Evans
> cmekve@aol.com
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Schneider <rjschn39@bellsouth.net>
> To: Rich Blinne <rich.blinne@gmail.com>
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Wed, 7 Jun 2006 10:39:32 -0400
> Subject: Re: In defense of Paul Seely
>
> Has anyone published a history of the hermeneutics and interpretation of
> Genesis 1? It would be interesting to see how the text has been interpreted
> in the light of newer cosmologies over the past 2,000 years. The one that
> sticks in my mind from my days as a medievalist is the section in the _Summa
> Theologiae_ where Thomas Aquinas interprets Genesis 1 in the context of
> Aristotelian cosmology. In a passage in which he reviews various statements
> about the division of the waters, he offers the opinion that Moses did not
> introduce the element of air (of the basic four elements) to describe the
> heavens because he " was speaking to ignorant people and out of
> condescension to their simpleness presented only those things that are
> immediately obvious to the senses" (ST I, 68, 3). Here you have concordism
> and accomodationism united in the same hermeneutic. St. Thomas'
> interpretation also suggests a way in which a concordist approach to
> interpreting the text has its own difficulties. It has to retool when a new
> cosmology becomes established.
>
> It doesn't matter what cosmological models we humans construct; they all
> will differ from the biblical model. Historically, theologians have always
> sought to find a modus vivendi with the current cosmology. The commonly
> acknowledged theological truth, however, is that the doctrine of creation
> remains, even as the understanding of the nature of the God-World
> relationship is re-articulated in the light of new cosmological knowledge.
> The doctrine is not dependent upon the model, however, and that is why one
> can honor the cosmology of Genesis 1 for what it was, the matrix for
> theological truth but a matrix recognizable to its own time and place, and
> not insist that somehow it must be able to be consonant with every new
> current cosmological model historically--to become all things to all men.
>
> Bob
> & nbsp;
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rich Blinne" <rich.blinne@gmail.com<rich.blinne%40gmail.com>
> >
> To: <glennmorton@entouch.net <glennmorton%40entouch.net>>
> Cc: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu <tdavis%40messiah.edu>>; "Robert
> Schneider" <rjschn39@bellsouth.net <rjschn39%40bellsouth.net>>; <
> asa@calvin.edu <asa%40calvin.edu>>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 9:04 AM
> Subject: Re: In defense of Paul Seely
>
> > On 6/7/06, glennmorton@entouch.net <glennmorton%40entouch.net> <
> glennmorton@entouch.net <glennmorton%40entouch.net>> wrote:
> >> YOu have correctly concluded that the YECs are wrong because what they
> >> teach doesn't
> >> concord with reality. In fact, it is just plain contra-evidential. But,
> >> whe n it comes
>
> >> to the Bible, we then conversely claim that it teaches true theology,
> and >> in spite of
> >> the bad data, it isn't REAAALLLLLYYYY wrong, just misunderstood.
> >>
> >> This illogic always amazes me.
> >
> > Glenn, this is somewhat of a non sequiter. Accomodationism does not
> > say the data so to speak is bad. Rather, it follows the New Testament
> > doctrine that the Old Testament was mysterious and thus not fully
> > perspicacious. Trying to find a spherical Earth in the OT is similar
> > to finding the Trinity in the OT. Calvin when interpreting Genesis 1
> > resisted the temptation of saying since Elohim could be interpreted as
> > plural that it taught the Trinity. Furthermore, accomodationism
> > encourages efforts such as yours and Dick's to find concord and only
> > parts company when the case a ppears overstated or where a
>
> > falsification of a particular concord unnecessarily falsifies the
> > whole. Both camps ultimately have the same goal of exegeting rather
> > than eisegeting the text and in my opinion are good correctives for
> > each other. The concordists call the accomodationists when they make
> > the text rather than the contemporary understanding of the text in
> > error and the accomodationists call the concordists when the alleged
> > concord is forced and overstated.
> >
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Received on Wed Jun 7 14:12:11 2006