Re: [asa] The Bible and the Anthropologically Universal Flood--further comment

Appealing to accommodation at times (e.g. use of terminology based on
ancient cosmology) shouldn't force one to forfeit the designation of
concordist. Also concordism shouldn't be judged on the basis of one
person's interpretations. There are concordists on this forum who disagree
profoundly with each other.

What I really want to comment on, though, is that Hugh Ross goes beyond
what is normal for concordism. Usually we think of concordism as bringing
concord between the Bible and what we know by other means in cases where
it might be thought that concord does not exist. However Ross also finds
it in passages where there does not even appear to be a problem to address
or even relevant subject matter. If his interpretations were correct, then
why weren't these scientific discoveries widely predicted by Christians
before they actually happened? One which seems farfetched is the claim
that Gen. 10:25 refers to the breaching of the Bering land bridge. Another
is that the stretching of the heavens in Isaiah 42:5 refers to the
expansion of the universe. If so, what does the spreading of the earth in
the next line refer to? These examples come from his article in PSCF.

Note that my criticisms of Dr. Ross's excesses are not intended to imply
criticism of his ministry in general.

Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395

On Fri, 16 Mar 2007, David Opderbeck wrote:

> Very briefly, here's what I found fascinating about the Seely-Ross
> exchange: it seems to set up "accomodation" and "concordism" as two
> distinct and essentially incommensurable paradigms. Reading those two
> articles, either Hugh is right, and all the "data" in Genesis matches up
> with some "data" from the natural sciences, or Paul is right, and the early
> Genesis stories can be considered completely ahistorical. The interesting
> thing is that I don't think either Hugh or Paul (I'm pretty sure this is so
> for Paul at least as Paul has very helpfully corresponded with me at various
> times) would really want to set it up this way.
>
> It seems to me that anyone who accepts a broad Christian statement of faith
> like the ASA's must engage in various degrees of "concord" and
> "accomodation" depending on the context, sometimes engaging in both in the
> same context. Almost all of us would agree that the gospel accounts of
> Jesus' death and resurrection must "concord" more or less with events that
> actually happened -- as our collective interest in the Talpiot tomb
> demonstrated.. And yet, even there, I'd bet we could have a lively debate,
> say, about what exactly happened when "the earth shook and the rocks split"
> as described in Matthew 26:5.
>
> Personally, the concept of accomodation has been an extremely valuable and
> fruitful one for me to learn about. What I'd love to see, though, is more
> work that tries to bridge the divide that Paul's and Hugh's articles seem to
> represent -- that neither sees a genre like the creation accounts as
> presenting "data" to be "harmonized" nor as simply "accomodated myth'
> without any historical referent at all; work that is neither accomodation*
> ist* nor concord*ist*, but that is wholistically attentive to each
> particular text as God's fully truthful self-revelation, rooted in history,
> and graciously mediated incarnationally through the agency of human
> literature.

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Received on Sat Mar 17 17:11:07 2007