Board index ‹ Creation and Evolution

[Newbie]

Some people say that once we accept the Bible as truth, we can feel free to ignore either the physical sciences or the hermeneutical sciences that speak against "stand alone on the Word of God." The young earth creationists' presuppositions require the following "logic": Since the Bible teaches that the world is young, all scientific evidence must be weighed against that plumb line. When I challenge the faultiness of such logic, the blasting I received was extremely painful, especially coming from fellow Christians.

I am trying to hand onto some kind of faith. Here are my questions:

How do we put together a workable unified vision of Scripture as a whole that incorporates non-concordist understandings of those portions of Scripture where such non-concordist understandings are required?

How do we put together a unified vision of Scripture if we don't believe in the young earth view?

How does one read the Scriptures devotionally, piously, as someone who is truly intent on obeying the Word and not merely being a (skeptical/critical/scholarly) hearer?

How does one teach "the next generation" (not to mention their parents!) how to read reverently-yet-critically? Or do we?

How does one (re-)establish some kind of reverential unity to the Scriptural message even if and as one “re-mythologizes” the Bible and/or recognizes the non-historical/non-scientific aspects of various stories throughout the Bible

I believe these are necessary, pressing pastoral issues in the church today. And I would love to help ensure that pastoral need is fulfilled. I am hoping these questions touch your heart as they do mine.

[jimwalton]

It was a pleasure to get your letter. Hopefully my degree and experience in Christian Education, along with my years of experience in youth ministry, will give us a launch point for a productive discussion. Originally as I read your post I sensed that your question was one of exegesis/eisegesis/hermeneutics, but as I continued down I realized that your questions pertained to Christian curricular education and “the problem with Christians” (as well as hermeneutics). If I haven’t seen that accurately, what follows here probably won’t make much sense. I’ll consider anything I write here to be merely the first response of what may be many thoughtful exchanges between us, should there be need and/or desire on your part to continue.

I’ll just warm up with a few general statements. Obviously Christians get caught up in their understandings of Scripture as being the right ones. No one holds to a position they know is wrong. We also get caught up in the hermetical understanding that we were taught as students: there is only one correct interpretation of Scripture, though there are many different applications. And I still agree with that. We each want to handle the Word of Truth (2 Tim. 2.15) with accuracy and integrity. None of us wants to be the teacher who leads people astray. ‘Nuff said, no debate there.

The Genesis 1 debate is only one of many hermeneutical debates of our era, including KJV vs. other translations, women in church leadership, homosexuality, etc. In a previous era it was eschatology. Some Christians are pretty laid back about their positions, allowing for variances of understanding without taking it personally, while others respond with weeping and gnashing of teeth. On one level I understand the nastiness of Christians when they think their theological fortress is under attack, whether overtly or subversively, but on another level it’s abhorrent. Even in Jesus’ day there were the divergent camps of Shammai & Hillel, and not too much later, Paul/Apollos/Cephas. As you well know, the stripes we get from other Christians can scar a person far deeper than those from the world. Anyone up in Christian leadership knows the wounds of fellow Christians that aren’t the wounds of a friend, but those of a devoted disciple of Jesus who fears for the truth. Enough warming up; let’s get to your questions.

Far more intelligent people (LeBar, Richards, Alexander, Gangel, Hendricks, Habermas, et al) than I have labored to create a workable unified vision of Scripture as a whole as it relates to Christian Education as a discipline. LeBar and Richards find a unifying nucleus in the concept of “life.” Alexander grabs onto “Mind and Heart”; Habermas and Issler wrote “Teaching for Reconciliation,” and Gangel/Hendricks go for “maturity” in relationships, morality, and theology.

But you want to know how to read the Scriptures both devotionally and piously with a commitment to obey. To me the clarifying and vitalizing point of contact is always the relationship to God: the presupposition that drives the hermeneutic that touches my soul. The text is there to enable and advance the relationship between God and myself/us in community. We study the text for linguistics, historicity, science, philosophy, systematic theology, grammar, context, and everything else, and rightly we should. A text that claims to be what the Bible claims should be able to stand up to the scrutiny of any discipline (what C.S. Lewis calls “clear” religion [God in the Dock, pp. 102-103]). How refreshing to be able to approach our faith with philosophy, science, linguistics, and all of the academia we can muster. By the same token, the Bible was not meant to be learned as much as it was meant to be lived (what Lewis might call “thick” religion). Any true religion has to be both clear and thick. If ever I lose the path of relationship in my academia, then I have strayed. Even in Genesis 1 & 2, in my opinion, the traditionalist view speaks to my theology, and the concordist interpretation speaks to theology and science, but the approach that my John Walton takes fulfills for me the relational aspect in that now I know who God is, what he did, and the “why” of it makes more sense to me relationally than the other interpretations. (This is not solely why I subscribe to John’s perspective.) John’s emphasis on role, function, and purpose makes the text leap into my heart, and I can engage the material as deeply academically as I want as well as I let it captivate me viscerally. This is not to say that the other approaches are completely lacking this factor. I think you get my point without my pressing it further.

How to teach the next generation to read reverently and still critically? It’s by always pressing both the best understanding of the mechanics of the text as possible while at the same time tuning the relationship to God. As Larry Richards would contend, it’s all about the life of God in us, and Habermas would concur, asserting that if the Word in us is not working some act of reconciliation, we have denigrated it to a Pharisaic regimen. When the Word lives in the teacher or the parent as a deeply studied and held truth based on evidentiary rigor, and yet it flows as a life-giving and invigorating river, we become champions of both truth and grace.

I know that my brother has been roundly criticized for relying so much on contemporary cultural clues as he interprets the Scripture. In my opinion, it’s a delusion of his detractors to separate the two. To rightly divide the Word to speak to our culture is something that every pastor does in the pulpit every Sunday. We use the language of our day, the illustrations of our day, and the concepts of our lives as we understand them in our era, and we teach and preach the unadulterated Word. Didn’t Moses do the same? I think so. I think John is right on target to interpret the text according to its cultural context within the parameters of what God was revealing to us.

Again, I understand the mentality of those who argue that we start with the WORD OF GOD and anything that speaks against it is suspect. But their mistaken presupposition is that what translators and interpreters of the Bible knew fifty years ago is all we should consider in the hermeneutical equation, and, I’m sorry, that’s just an Amish approach to life.

The Bible nowhere requires a young-earth understanding. As more is discovered about ancient genealogies (see John Walton, Old Testament Today, p. 57-58), we recognize that they were not written to express a continuity of years as much as they served to reveal a continuity of blessing. Also, given John’s blossoming stance that Adam and Eve, though historical, are portrayed archetypally in the text, changes the whole picture of the genealogies of tracing God’s blessing from that point on, which has NOTHING to do with the age of the earth.

Certainly every Bible scholar worth his salt understands that the Bible is full of metaphors, similes, parables, allegory, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, poetry, rhetoric, etc. Does that mean we don’t take the Bible literally when we recognize a figure of speech as a figure of speech? When the Psalms says God rides on the clouds, do I need to perceive him as a cloud charioteer, or else I’m a heretic who doesn’t take the Bible literally? To me that hermeneutic strangles the life out of the Bible only so that I can sit comfortably in a little theological box I have made for myself and a few friends who agree with me, while we shut out the forces of reason in deference to the forces of restriction. Ooh, now I sound like I’m getting worked up. It’s my particular perspective that God sets us free, that he enlarges our world and our minds, and that he tears the roof off our lives, and rips the floor out from under us to bring us to ever-expanding understandings, not ever-restricting ones. My soapbox, I guess.

The unity, strength, and truth of the Biblical message is not undermined if I approach the text literarily as well as grammatically. Aspects of plot and conflict, motif and archetype, bring a text to life without denying its literal quality. If “literal” means “just read the words and no further,” we have gagged the mouth of the Word so tightly that King David himself would be silenced.

I hope I have at least spoken to some of the intent of your questions. This is just my first shot out into the waters you have plied for me. Feel free to respond, rebuke, rephrase, or re-question.

Hang on to your faith. If you have your hand in the cookie jar of the fantastic glory of God’s Word, you are holding a treasure despite the nippings of blood-suckers you feel on skin.