Re: [asa] Slug

Iain Strachan wrote:

> Owen's statement "woke once the clays of a cold star" carries so much
> meaning in the context - the warm body of the newly dead soldier is going to go
> cold, and the sun, the origin of life, can do nothing to stop this happening.
> If we start insisting that the statements about the origin of life have to
> be scientifically accurate (or at least not inaccurate), then we lose the
> point of what is being said.
>

That is an interesting point. Even now, I might prefer to
describe God as "stretching out the heavens" or "riding the
thunder clouds" yet hardly mean that in any literal sense.
The former poetically could be taken as inflation (like
Hugh Ross sees it), but just looking up at the stars on a
clear night outside of the intense beam produced by Tokyo's
city lights, the heavens are just awesome and beautiful. It
describes in words what I am simply at a loss for words to
even say.

But there is a bit of a difficult side to this... In trying
to decide which points to actually take seriously; we can
start to modify every command in scripture to our own liking.
This is perhaps the most solid argument that the YECs can
raise issue on. Whereas they twist, bend and invert
science, in principle, they do know they should obey God's
word. Yet ironically, in the process, it does seem to bear
false witness, and therefore disobey God's word. So in the
end, they are also inconsistent even by the criteria of "God's
word".

So I certainly agree your argument has merit. I guess
what this shows is that one cannot use a single approach
universally: be it is accommodation, concordance or literalism.
All of them can get us stuck in a quagmire and maybe that is
why I still think fellowship, daily prayer, and daily reading
are so important. Perhaps I should add to that list good
mentors.

It would be much easier I suppose, if we could just _know_
the world is 6000 years old, there was a flood the covered
the earth, a tower of Babel, etc. But you can see that even
in the time of Abraham when nothing was known, Abraham
had doubts. Why else would he say Sarah was his sister?
If we could be so assured about all these things, there would
not be any need for faith and we could just charge out into the
world giving no one any choice about what is true. So perhaps
faith is what helps us finally sort out what we need to know and
we're not granted this kind of assurance because of the damage
we would surely do.

by Grace we proceed,
Wayne

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Received on Sat Jun 17 23:15:36 2006