Story of creation: Genesis.

[Kbertsche]

That doesn't say much for Gods ability to communicate to us what he wants us to know Kbertsche. I don't say that as an antagonist as some here would like to suggest of me, but as one who sees that as a problem in accepting it as the word of God. If the biblical authors are human beings who are trying to communicate their personal ideas, or beliefs, then such an obscure and flawed rendering could be understood, but if it is God who is trying to communicate the facts of existence then I would think he could do so in a clear and precise way.

This says nothing about God's ability, what He could or could not do. Rather, it speaks to His activity, what He actually did do.

You can only view Scripture as "obscure" and "flawed" if you come at it with your own agenda, insisting that it answer your own pet questions. I would suggest a different perspective: if something in Scripture is not very clear or precise, then apparently God did not deem it necessary to make this item clear, suggesting that God did not consider it so important for us to understand this item. The main teachings of Scripture, e.g. the person of Christ, His death, and His resurrection, are very clear and are not obscure at all, suggesting that these are the things that God is most concerned that we understand.

[Carrikature]

This says nothing about God's ability, what He could or could not do. Rather, it speaks to His activity, what He actually did do.

You can only view Scripture as "obscure" and "flawed" if you come at it with your own agenda, insisting that it answer your own pet questions. I would suggest a different perspective: if something in Scripture is not very clear or precise, then apparently God did not deem it necessary to make this item clear, suggesting that God did not consider it so important for us to understand this item. The main teachings of Scripture, e.g. the person of Christ, His death, and His resurrection, are very clear and are not obscure at all, suggesting that these are the things that God is most concerned that we understand.

While I more or less agree, I hope you realize how utterly convenient this sounds.

[Shadow Templar]

No, it doesn't.

Hm, really?

If you hold that God exists, where does your rationale come from? If you believe in the God of the Bible, where is your defense? The Bible itself. If you believe in God but not the Bible... well, you're not really believing in the god of the Bible, now, are we?

So it holds that if you believe in the God of the Bible, you believe the Bible to be truth. If that's the case, then the Bible is one of the ways God communicates with us. Where am I going wrong with this?

[JonathanL]

Hm, really?

If you hold that God exists, where does your rationale come from? If you believe in the God of the Bible, where is your defense? The Bible itself. If you believe in God but not the Bible... well, you're not really believing in the god of the Bible, now, are we?

So it holds that if you believe in the God of the Bible, you believe the Bible to be truth. If that's the case, then the Bible is one of the ways God communicates with us. Where am I going wrong with this?

Carrik was probably going with the assumption that you were talking about a theistic/deistic God in general, not the God of the Bible specifically.

[rogue06]

snip


The problem disappears if you remove infallibility from the adherents of "Orthodox (sic) Christianity for most of it's history." I do not see the faulty interpretation of Genesis by early Christian (or anyone else) as demonstrating a flaw in the Bible. The flaw is in the interpretation. I believe the Genesis account is literally true, but I also accept the data found by modern science. No problem.

Exactly. Just because we misunderstood something doesn't make the source wrong.

[rogue06]

Yes. I wasn't denying that. However, the author of Genesis didn't ( I think) intend his account to be read as a 'scientific' one, so his focus is not so much on the details, in precise order, of the process, but on the who (God).



Agreed.

This brings up what Old Testament scholar John H. Walton wrote near the beginning of his "Lost World of Genesis One"

Walton essentially holds that we have adopted an interpretation concerning the material origins of the world which he argues is a modern preoccupation of the last 200 years or so, with Genesis 1 falsely being brought into judgment for something it was never written or designed to do.

Walton contends that the Bible employs the cosmological understanding of the ancient world to describe creation from functional rather than material ontological perspective, which leaves open the precise details of how the material nature of the world originated (in which those primary functions of sun, moon, stars, sea and land, vegetation, living beings operate). The Genesis account, argues Walton, disengages with science, and its concern with the investigation of matter, and instead focuses on metaphysical questions of how the universe was ordered by God.

He elaborates on this in his "Creation in Genesis 1:1-2:3 and the Ancient Near East: Order out of Disorder after Chaoskampf" where he explains that functional ontology is interested in somethings role and purpose and not interested in its material status:

"In such an ontology, to bring something into existence (i.e., to create something) means to give it a function and a role, not to give it physical properties ... They contain little information concerning material origins. The precreation state is not absent of matter but absent of function. Creation involves the giving of functions often in terms of separating, naming, and assigning roles ... If Genesis 1 were an account of material origins, we would logically expect it to start when no material existed. Yet, in Genesis 1:2, the situation described is not absent of matter ["darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters" Gen 1:2] but absent of function

[rogue06]

Don't you find it strange how his accounting of his creation is wrong then!

That is incorrect. It is our insistence on reading it in an overly literal manner and making it into a scientific text that was wrong.

[Carrikature]

Hm, really?

If you hold that God exists, where does your rationale come from? If you believe in the God of the Bible, where is your defense? The Bible itself. If you believe in God but not the Bible... well, you're not really believing in the god of the Bible, now, are we?

So it holds that if you believe in the God of the Bible, you believe the Bible to be truth. If that's the case, then the Bible is one of the ways God communicates with us. Where am I going wrong with this?

It's possible to believe in the God of the Bible without having ever heard of the Bible (let alone read it). This is something many Christians I know would agree with, and it's backed up ostensibly with the "law written on their hearts" verse, among others. It's the same God, after all. The type of information is not as important as the source, and the source is God.

As you say, the Bible is one of the ways God is said to communicate to us. It's not the only one, though. It also doesn't mean he has to use that method, and it doesn't automatically follow that he does so. Look back at what you actually said:

But if you hold that God exists, then it also follows that he communicates his will to us. Hence, we have the Bible.

It quite simply doesn't follow that he communicates his will to us. Further, he might communicate his will to us in other ways, and the Bible be a human-only account of limited understanding (that is nonetheless reasonably accurate, as it's the same God). It's also worth noting that before the Bible (in any form), God presumably managed to communicate to humans. Or, maybe, the humans just thought that's what was happening.

Where you're going wrong is that you're starting from a conclusion and working backwards. It doesn't work like that.

Carrik was probably going with the assumption that you were talking about a theistic/deistic God in general, not the God of the Bible specifically.

Not quite, as I think I've explained.

[rogue06]

Not only wrong but wrong headed. No matter what orthodox (I am not concerned with the Orthodox Church in this matter) church understood does not in any way limit what the divine author wrote. The early church got what they needed - God created everything. I read the Genesis account as literally true. That does not mean that I must accept what men understood thousands of years ago. In other words "The literal interpretation as believed and understood in most history" can be flawed without any flaw being present in the text itself. You are inserting your own beliefs into the text, not reading what it says.

You do not need my leave to believe what you believe, nor am I bound to see the Bible as the flawed work if ignorant men trying to make sense of what was not sensible to them as you seem to.

everything^[1][2].

Finally, we must keep in mind that the entire concept of reconstructing and recounting events in exact statistical detail (as it actually happened) is a relatively modern development owing a lot to the ideals of the 19th century positivists. The point is that it is ridiculous to hold Genesis, or other parts of the Bible for that matter, to modern standards of scholarship that were unknown to it.

Paul tells us what the purpose of the Bible is, and it is not to tell us how nature functions or came about. Rather, it is "to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (II Timothy 3:15). It is "breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work" (vs. 16-17).

Genesis isn't an attempt to grapple with or answer technical scientific questions, but instead deals with matters beyond the realm of science. It seeks to bring us in touch with the eternal God and to reveal the sacred meaning of His being, His purpose and His dealings with us as He works out His holy will. Simply put, the Bible is not trying to tell us exactly HOW or WHEN God did this or that but rather, it is telling us WHY God did this.










1. And God is responsible not just for the origin of all that there is but the entire being of all that is (As Thomas Aquinas wrote in "De potentia dei" (On the Power of God), the only cause of being is the power of God and all natural causes act as instruments of that power).

2.

[rogue06]

What does any of this have to do with the interpretation of Genesis? (Except, maybe, to underscore that Gen 1 is not a scientific account of creation.) The human author knew nothing of the Big Bang or any other modern science, so why would you expect him to talk about these things?

Exactly my point. Genesis is not the word of God, though many here claim God himself to be the author.

Only if you think that the purpose of the Bible creation account was to give a science lesson.

[rogue06]

On Mars' Hill Paul quotes the Greek poet Aratus' Phaenomena in Acts 17:28 and Menander's Thais in I Corinthians 15:33. Further when Paul refers to kicking against the pricks or goads in Acts 26:14 that term comes from Aeschylus' Agamemnon.

Should we now consider Phaenomena, Thais and Agamemnon part of the Bible?

[Shadow Templar]

It's possible to believe in the God of the Bible without having ever heard of the Bible (let alone read it). This is something many Christians I know would agree with, and it's backed up ostensibly with the "law written on their hearts" verse, among others. It's the same God, after all. The type of information is not as important as the source, and the source is God.

Cool. But just because you CAN know about him without the Bible doesn't mean the that Bible DOESN'T communicate God's will to us. I'm not saying you were claiming such, but I don't see how your point here says anything about the belief that God communicates with us through he Bible.

As you say, the Bible is one of the ways God is said to communicate to us. It's not the only one, though. It also doesn't mean he has to use that method, and it doesn't automatically follow that he does so.

Whether or not the Bible is the only way He communicates with us isn't really my point at all. There are two options:
1. The Bible is the Word of God, and thus is one of the ways be communicates with us.
2. The Bible is NOT the Word of God, and is just a book of humans telling each other morals and such.

IF you believe in the God of the Bible, how can you NOT believe in the Bible? How could you say "Yeah, the God that's in the Bible is legit, but that whole Bible thing is wrong"? That's flawed fundamentally. Hence, it's really not a leap to assume that if you believe in the God of the Bible as well as the Bible, then you also believe that the Bible itself is the Word of God. That part is not really unclear (So long as you believe in the Bible).

It quite simply doesn't follow that he communicates his will to us. Further, he might communicate his will to us in other ways, and the Bible be a human-only account of limited understanding (that is nonetheless reasonably accurate, as it's the same God). It's also worth noting that before the Bible (in any form), God presumably managed to communicate to humans. Or, maybe, the humans just thought that's what was happening.

The God of the Bible (The one that the Bible describes) does communicate to us. That's IN THE BIBLE ITSELF. That's what we mean by "The God of the Bible". IF you believe in "The God of the Bible" THEN you believe that the Bible is telling you the truth about the God that the Bible is telling you about. It's kinda fundamental. But I seem to be repeating myself. I'm not sure it's doing much good, as what I'm saying doesn't seem to be being understood. Anyone else want to take a crack at what I'm saying (or at least trying to say)?

Where you're going wrong is that you're starting from a conclusion and working backwards. It doesn't work like that.

I'm not working backward, I'm working from the starting point of "The God of the Bible". It doesn't matter if the Bible is the only way he communicates with us, the point is that if you believe the Bible to be true, then you believe it to be the Word of God, and if you believe it to be the Word of God, then you believe that God communicates with us through the Bible. That's it.

[shunyadragon]

On Mars' Hill Paul quotes the Greek poet Aratus' Phaenomena in Acts 17:28 and Menander's Thais in I Corinthians 15:33. Further when Paul refers to kicking against the pricks or goads in Acts 26:14 that term comes from Aeschylus' Agamemnon.

Should we now consider Phaenomena, Thais and Agamemnon part of the Bible?

No, because none of the above claim to be scripture, nor referred to as scripture, nor were the authors referred to as a prophet as Enoch was. Yes, some minor churches do consider I Enoch as Canon. Back up and read my references and posts more carefully as to how I describe Enoch, and my reference refer to the places in the Bible that appear to use Enoch as their source for the citations. It was likely that I Enoch had a higher standing as scripture in the past.

[Carrikature]

Cool. But just because you CAN know about him without the Bible doesn't mean the that Bible DOESN'T communicate God's will to us. I'm not saying you were claiming such, but I don't see how your point here says anything about the belief that God communicates with us through he Bible.

It seems you've already forgotten your initial claim and my contention, then. You said:

But if you hold that God exists, then it also follows that he communicates his will to us.

I've established how it could be possible that God exist and not communicate his will, and you've as much as agreed. God communicating his will to us is not a requirement for belief, nor is it a necessary aspect of his existence. Hence, "it also follows" is false.

IF you believe in the God of the Bible, how can you NOT believe in the Bible? How could you say "Yeah, the God that's in the Bible is legit, but that whole Bible thing is wrong"? That's flawed fundamentally. Hence, it's really not a leap to assume that if you believe in the God of the Bible as well as the Bible, then you also believe that the Bible itself is the Word of God. That part is not really unclear (So long as you believe in the Bible).

I already answered this. If it's possible to believe in God without the Bible, it's possible to believe in the God of the Bible (same God) without believing in the Bible. Such a person wouldn't have the Bible to believe in. It's that simple. More to the point, a person who believed in God without the Bible might never know that God has communicated his will. The communication is not a requirement but a bonus.

The God of the Bible (The one that the Bible describes) does communicate to us. That's IN THE BIBLE ITSELF. That's what we mean by "The God of the Bible". IF you believe in "The God of the Bible" THEN you believe that the Bible is telling you the truth about the God that the Bible is telling you about. It's kinda fundamental. But I seem to be repeating myself. I'm not sure it's doing much good, as what I'm saying doesn't seem to be being understood. Anyone else want to take a crack at what I'm saying (or at least trying to say)?

I understand perfectly well what you're saying, but you're not actually engaging my point. You said:

But if you hold that God exists, then it also follows that he communicates his will to us.

You can't support this claim by saying "God communicated to us with the Bible". The above statement is a non-sequitur. There's nothing essential to belief in God that also requires that God communicate his will. They are separate things. God could exist, and there could be evidence for his existence, and a person could believe based on that evidence. Nothing here requires that God communicate his will.

I'm not working backward, I'm working from the starting point of "The God of the Bible". It doesn't matter if the Bible is the only way he communicates with us, the point is that if you believe the Bible to be true, then you believe it to be the Word of God, and if you believe it to be the Word of God, then you believe that God communicates with us through the Bible. That's it.

You're working with the claim of "God communicated to us via the Bible" to establish

But if you hold that God exists, then it also follows that he communicates his will to us.

It doesn't work like that.

[Doug Shaver]

people are telling you what you want to know, and you're deciding to refuse to listen

I'm not believing. That doesn't mean I'm not listening.

You may flatter yourself with the notion that anyone who cares about the truth must automatically know it whenever they hear it from you. Nevertheless, if you can't give me a good reason to believe what you say, then I am in no way obliged to believe what you say. Even if it happens to be the truth, your say-so doesn't make it so.