Re: Are there guidelines for accommodational interpretation?

Of course I am not an expert in your "theology of the cross", but in the
same issue of Perspectives, McIntryre interprets that once Adam "ate of the
tree of good and evil: "his eyes were opended and he knew that he was
naked." Knowing good and evil, Adam is no longer simply a part of nature.
He now, like God, transcends the natural world and can evaluate the events
that occur there. ...Before eating of the tree, Adam was an innocent
creature even though he followed the desires of his animal nature. Being
innocent, he was guiltless but not righteous...Now his formerly innocent
animal desires led him to sin. For "apart from the law sin lies dead"."
And becomes a sinner in need of the cross.

This sounds very similar to your Christ first theology. That is once man
was given the Law of God, it was inevitable that he would sin.

And McIntyre interprets all this while maintaining a view that Adam was an
historical figure.

----- Original Message -----
From: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>
To: "Paul Seely" <PHSeely@msn.com>; <asa@calvin.edu>; "jack syme"
<drsyme@cablespeed.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 8:59 PM
Subject: Re: Are there guidelines for accommodational interpretation?

>I have already made some comments on "accomodation" in some of my recent
>exchanges with Glenn. (I'm not sure anyone but Glenn & I read these
>chapters in our ongoing debate but they are there!) I put "accomodation"
>in quotes because I agree with Glenn that it isn't always an ideal term.
>Here just a couple of further remarks.
>
> 1st, I have just begun to think about this topic recently. In my recent
> PSCF article I referred to some of Paul's work but at that point had not
> gone a lot further than that. The book by RC scholar Bruce Vawter to
> which I referred in my recent _Covalence_ article, _The Inspiration of
> Scripture_ (Westminster, 1972) is of some interest here. He points out in
> particular that the idea of accomodation goes well back back before
> Calvin - to, e.g., Chrysostom.
>
> 2d, I think the justification for talking about accomodation is the divine
> kenosis shown in the Incarnation. I am interested in pursuing this from
> the standpoint of a theology of the cross, which has been the context for
> most of my theology-science work. Thus any "guidelines for accomodational
> interpretation" should be evaluated in the light of the cross.
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Seely" <PHSeely@msn.com>
> To: <asa@calvin.edu>; "jack syme" <drsyme@cablespeed.com>
> Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 8:26 PM
> Subject: 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 21:21:59 2006