[asa] Re: Are there guidelines for accommodational interpretation?

----- Original Message -----
From: "jack syme" <drsyme@cablespeed.com>
To: "George Murphy" <gmurphy@raex.com>; "Paul Seely" <PHSeely@msn.com>;
"Travis Marler" <tmarler@hotmail.com>; <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2006 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: Are there guidelines for accommodational interpretation?

> Thanks for your reply George.
>
> I guess my discomfort relates to the implications of this interpretation
> to what it means for the Bible to be the inspired word of God. If
> acceptable interpretation of inspired scripture can be so protean, then it
> ceases to have relevance.
>
> I can accept that the author of Genesis was writing about a cosmology that
> was all that he understood. And the audience that he was writing to, it
> was all they understood. But the purpose of using those pre-existing
> mythologies, it seems to me, was a background, or a vehicle to communicate
> deeper spiritual truths.
>
> In the case of Paul, the historicity of Adam is not part of the
> background, it is actually part of the message. And if Paul was mistaken
> about that, maybe he was mistaken about other things. And I guess this is
> the point Glenn is trying to make, if the interpretation of the text
> changes over time, why is the message of the Bible superior to any other?
>
> Maybe God emptied himself and became a Buddha for the Buddhist, Zoroaster
> for the Zoroastrians, etc.

1st I should perhaps emphasize that the purpose of my PSCF paper was to
suggest a way of thinking about original sin in a way that takes seriously
(a) human evolution & (b) the belief that what the first humans did was a
causal factor of the sinful state in which humanity finds itself. While the
scientific evidence from paleoanthropology & genetics makes it seem unlikely
that the whole human race today is descended from a single couple, the
proposal which I made is not dependent on that. If it turns out that there
was such a single couple then there is nothing essential in my paper which
would need to be changed. The church fathers whom I cite for the original
condition of humans of course believed that.

2d, I think it's harder than you suggest to distinguish between the
situations with Genesis & Romans. In both cases you have a belief held in
the culture of the biblical writer - ANE cosmology for Genesis & 1st century
Jewish belief in an historical Adam & Eve for Paul.

3d, you say that, in contrast to the situation with Genesis, for Paul the
historicicity of Adam "is actually part of the message." But again, what is
the message? It's the problem of sin and God's solution in Christ. Before
referring at all to Adam in Ch.5, Paul sets out the whole problem & God's
answer in Chs.1-3 without mentioning Adam.

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

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Received on Tue Jun 13 07:16:35 2006