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

David wrote,
<<Accommodationist approaches will get a better hearing among those more sympathetic to concordism if they focus on how to control the subjective aspect of deciding what is or is not an accommodation in addition to noting problems with specific concordisms.>>

This is true, and the question of controlling subjectivity is an important one. This has got me thinking further as to the answer to this question. So, I asked myself, How do we ever control the subjective aspect of an interpretation? The answer is by referencing the relevant objective data.

<<One difference between the elements of ancient near eastern cosmology in Genesis 1-2 and Paul's citation of Adam in Romans is that the ANE cosmology provided the words, issues, and imagery available. It seems more akin to our use of phrases like sunrise or the ends of the earth in this way. Conversely, it seems as though Paul could word his argument a bit differently and still convey the same theological point without giving the impression that Adam was a historical individual in the distant past who accurately represented us by erring, the consequences of which afflict all humans. (In another sense, Jesus represented humanity more accurately.)>>

This issue, which Jack brought up in the first place, gives us a chance to see how accommodation is a proper approach to the NT Adam just as much as to the OT cosmology.

The OT cosmology may seem to a modern reader more akin to our phenomenal or figurative language than does the NT Adam, but an examination of the objective data, most of which are given in my papers on the OT cosmology, indicate that the OT reader would have understood Gen 1:7 "God made the expanse..." as just as much literal history as the NT reader would have understood Paul's Adam. The OT reader "knew" there was a solid sky, and Gen 1:7 was telling him that God made it. He would have denied that Gen 1:7 was phenomenal or figurative language. He would have figured that since God made it, the solid sky must have really existed as a literal physical part of the universe. But, is a concept of a solid sky contrary to any objective data? Most everyone seems to agree that it is. Does it reflect the science of the times? I have shown in my paper on the firmament that it does. So, the solid sky concept can legitimately be understood as an accommodation to the beliefs of the times.

Just as no one in OT times doubted the physical existence of the solid sky, so judging by the rest of the NT and the literature of the times, no Bible believer in NT times doubted the physical existence of Adam as a historical person who sinned. Paul could have worded his argument so that the reader would not have the impression that Adam was a historical individual, but Paul himself and all of his readers already believed Adam was a historical individual. It would have been unnatural and inorganic for Paul to avoid the belief they all shared. Jack thought it was one of Paul's points that Adam was historical. I do not think so. I think it was one of his and his audience's assumptions. Why should Paul make the point that Adam was historical when all his readers already believed that?

There is sufficient objective data to show that the belief in a historical Adam was the belief of the times in Judaeo-Christian circles of the first century. Is there any extra-biblical data which confirms this belief? I know of none. Is there any objective data which falsifies this belief or leads us to believe it is too improbable for educated people to believe? Geneticists say the first humans arose as a group of males and females, and if one wants to put the first humans further down the biological line there are all the more males and females. If so, this falsifies the "history" of a first man whose wife was made from one of his ribs. It seems even clearer that there were human beings living long before Neolithic times, but Adam is portrayed as the first human and his culture is Neolithic. So, again the "history" is falsified. There is then an objective basis for saying the historicity of Adam is probably an accommodation to the beliefs of the times.

Adam's story could still be analogical, and Paul's parallel between Adam and Christ is not perfect, so there is some room for some give and take. John J. Davis and James Orr both adopted analogy as the way to bring Gen 5 and science together, and George Murphy has just given us another way to read the story. Both approaches maintain the theologically essential history--at least in a biblical theology if not in every denominational theology.

So, the guideline is: If a belief preexists in the culture of the people of God but modern science falsifies it, yet it shows up in Scripture, it is a divine accommodation.

Paul

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Received on Wed Jun 14 21:35:30 2006