RE: [asa] The Barr quote

Randy,

I see where you're going with these questions, but I'm not sure the logic
follows, and seems to tangle things up a bit.

First, I'm not sure who the "& co." refers to, I assume maybe some of those
scholars at "world class universities", but I think it would be difficult to
generalize what they are all saying. Within that statement, I'm not sure
the characterization is correct that these scholars hold that the text is
"humanly inspired but not divinely inspired" just because the earth may not
actually be 6000 years old. There are plenty of scholars going back to the
19th century who reasoned that the text was still divinely inspired but not
literal in the common sense.

Second, your statements at the end assume the claim of "Barr & co." to be
true about the relatively recent origin and non-chronological character of
Genesis. But many conservative scholars will hold to both the literal
straightforward intent of the text and the authorship (or at least
significant contribution) of Moses, so it wouldn't be correct to correlate
the six 24-hour days interpretation with a relatively recent, human origin
of the text. Whether these "world class university" scholars believe the
24-hour day interpretation is a recent, human textual inspiration would
certainly be an interesting point that you are identifying, but certainly
one to be disputed as to its truthfulness.

To rephrase the question: IF the earth was really (scientifically speaking)
not created in six 24-hour days, and IF the original human author(s) (Moses
included) believed and intended to say that it was created in six 24-hour
days, and IF this error on their part means the text is of human origin, not
God's message of truth to us; then this would contradict what YEC's believe
-- and it would fully validate the reason for their concerns over any
compromise on the question of origins.

But the truth of the second "IF" is Barr's assertion, which may or may not
be correct, and is one of the things being discussed here -- I guess it
would take some independent confirmation on what those scholars actually
believe. The third "IF" above is precisely the faulty assumption made by
YEC's, atheists, and many liberal scholars -- other conservative
interpreters and scholars argue for the divine inspiration of the text
through accommodation, concordism, etc.

Your last sentence indicated that scientific evidence could be compatible
with a relatively recent, human-inspired intention to write about six
24-hour days in the creation account. While that might be true, I don't
think that's the sort of message that we should promote as faithful to both
science and scripture -- sounds like a blunt "science is true, Bible is
false" dichotomy.

Sincerely,

Jon Tandy

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Randy Isaac
Sent: Sunday, May 18, 2008 9:42 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] The Barr quote

In light of all your comments, is it accurate to say the following?

Barr and "any professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class
university" believe that the authors of Genesis 1 fully believed and
intended a message of creation in six 24-hour days. With this, the typical
YEC agrees.

Barr & co. apparently would also believe the following with which the
typical YEC would not agree:
--the world was not in fact created in six 24 hour days so that the Bible is

in error
--the Genesis passage is humanly inspired but not divinely inspired
--the message that God created the world in six 24 hour days is not God
telling us what actually happened
--Genesis was written in 5th or 6th century BC by Hebrew scribes

If so, we have a curious situation:

the interpretation of a 6 24hour day creation is correlated with a view that

the Bible (or at least Genesis) is of recent (relatively) human inspiration
and origin, not God's message of truth to us.

the view that Genesis has an indeterminate (either long or no message of
chronology) is correlated with a view that the Bible is of divine
inspiration and origin, with Genesis written earlier, taken from God's
theological message to a Mesopotamian audience.

That's quite the opposite of what is normally claimed. Scientific evidence
of an old earth would be consistent with both of the above views (heads I
win, tails you lose) but the YEC position would pick and choose from each
one.

Randy

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Received on Mon May 19 00:48:30 2008