Re: Are there guidelines for accommodational interpretation?

Jack wrote,
<<I can accept this as accommodation, the ancients likely had no conception
of
cosmology as we do today.

But George also claims that even though Paul thought of Adam as a historical
figure, there is no reason for us to do so. George makes the claim that
Paul's understanding, even though it was incorrect, was an accommodation
based on the understanding of Judaism at the time. Also, in the 666
thread, he claimed that even though John expected that the end of the age,
was going to occurr in the first century, he was mistaken.

I have trouble being convinced of this accommodationalist position. Perhaps
because, as inspired writers, Paul and John should have known better. The
ideas of Adam being historical, and the end times being a first century
event, certainly seems to be something that Paul and John could understand,
which seems, to me anyway, not the case with the author of Genesis 1.

Is there any book or article that explains this method of interpretation?>>

You have raised an important question, which I can only begin to answer and
cannot claim that I have the full answer.

You have no problem with accepting the ancient cosmology in Genesis as an
accommodation, and this is in keeping with my answer to Wayne Dawson, which
may interest you (Is there any way to falsify accomodationalist
interpretations?)

But, you ask, is it legitimate to say Paul's belief in a historical Adam is
an accommodation? I was troubled by the way George phrased this, but since a
historical Adam, that is, a Neolithic and probably Chalcolithic person is
set forth as the very first genuine human being, I think this reflects
ancient science, and hence is open to being a legitimate case of
accommodation. In spite of that, just as we can gather from Genesis 1 that
God created the sky even though it is not solid, we can gather that the
first man sinned the first sin, or for our friends in genetics, that
sinfulness can be tracked back to the first group of human beings.

Having said that, I must add that I follow Jesus and Calvin in believing
that even some pre-embedded cultural ideas about other matters than science
are accommodated in Scripture. Jesus spoke of the laws of divorce in Deut
24:1-4 as being written for the sake of human hardness of heart, a
concession or accommodation to sinfulness. Most see slavery and polygamy in
the Bible as also being accommodations. What Jesus introduced was that some
statements in the Bible could be accommodations to man's sinfulness, and
interestingly I think no one pursued this line of thinking more diligently
than Calvin.

So, now what do we do for a guideline? I think we go to the teaching of
Jesus as the canon within the canon. I also think there is such a thing as
hearing the Holy Spirit. This still leaves grey zones, but the truth is,
Grey zones were always there.

Though not being a formal answer to this issue of guide lines, one might
draw insight from Calvin's use of accommodation as laid out in the end of my
paper, The Date of the Tower of Babel and Some Theological Implications"
as well as from the articles named in the footnotes, and from Peter Enns'
book, Inspiration and Incarnation. Peter Enns, Ph.D.(Harvard) is professor
of OT at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
My paper on the Tower of Babel is online at
http://www.occasioncameras.com/creationdays/pdf/seely.babel.wtj.2001.pdf

Paul

 
Received on Sat Jun 10 20:25:28 2006