Re: [asa] Creationism Conference (The Queen of Sciences)

In the PSCF article to which I referred I said,

    "We first need to ask how appropriate "book" language is in this context. It is clear that its use for nature is metaphorical: We do not literally "read" the world. But
what about special revelation? The meaning here seems at first to be straightforward: God's "other book" is the Bible. In support of this idea, one might appeal to Psalm

19, one of the classic texts used to argue for a twofold revelation. Here a statement about the proclamation of the glory of God by the heavens continues with verses

praising the law, precepts, etc. of YHWH.

    We need to be careful, however. God's fundamental revelation is his actions in the history of Israel which culminate in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of

Nazareth. As part of those actions, God inspired prophets and apostles to proclaim-before they wrote-God's will and point to Christ as its fullest expression. The

Bible is the authoritative written witness to that revelation and the basis for its transmission.

    This is not to deny that the Bible can properly be called revelation insofar as it testifies to that historical revelation. But Christians are not to believe that the Bible is

God's ultimate revelation, as Muslims believe the Qur'an to be. God's ultimate revelation is not the written Word, important as that is, but the Word made flesh, Jesus

Christ."

    In neither case do we literally "read" the primary data. I suspect though that the whole metaphor originated with, & is reinforced by, the idea that the Bible is primary revelation. That's wrong, although the metaphor or analogy of "the two books" is OK as far as it goes

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Dehler, Bernie
  To: asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 11:31 AM
  Subject: RE: [asa] Creationism Conference (The Queen of Sciences)

  George Murphy said:
  " We read about nature in books but we don't read nature itself. & we read about what God has done in the history of Israel & in Jesus but that's not the same thing as reading those events themselves. Natural & historical phenomena are the primary things & the books are secondary."

  So we agree that in that way Book 1 is like Book 2; I thought your prior point prior was that Book 2 was different in that it couldn't be literally read. My point was that both books are handled the same-- you "read" one just as you "read" the other. So I guess we are in agreement.

  ) as the body of the message.

To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
"unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
Received on Wed Jun 25 12:13:29 2008