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scott_jorgenson
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2002
Total Posts : 271
| Posted 3/30/2004 11:34 AM (GMT -6) |   | quote:
Originally posted by kcy1998
WOW!
Scott and larris you are really providing me with lots of stuff to think about. I am going to get the C.S. Lewis book that Scott mentioned. Since my early age 24 hour creation and inerrancy have been staples in my church life. Now I am beginning to see some cracks in the armor.
It is hard to accept because of the teachings that if the inerrancy of the Bible falls then all of the teachings in the Bible are suspect. I guess that this is my baggage and I need to work through it. Please say a prayer for me as I journey down this path.
Thanks,
Kevin
Hi Kevin,
I'm glad you've found what I've written to be helpful. I've read "larris" posting too, and, by the way, I want to make sure there is no confusion: what he advocates as a way to understand Genesis apart from young-earth creationist literalism is quite different from what I've advocated on this forum.
As I've said before, there are basically two approaches to understanding Genesis' relation to science and history: concordism and ahistoricism. Concordism is the idea that God cared to make Genesis align with what actually happened in the process of creation - and that, therefore, Genesis does accord (or "concord", hence the name) with science and history when properly understood. Ahistoricism, on the other hand, is the idea that God had sufficient other primary purposes in mind with Genesis that he did not care to make Genesis reveal, or fit with, actual science and history - and that, therefore, Genesis does not necessarily accord with science and history and that's OK.
Here I have advocated a variety of ahistoricism (Genesis does not fit with what actually happened in history, and so what), while "larris" approach is concordistic in nature (Genesis does more-or-less fit with what actually happened in history, if you just interpret it the right way). I am not at all opposed to larris however, and value forms of moderate concordism like his as an alternative escape route from young-earth creationism (an extreme form of concordism) for those so inclined. So I'm not going to offer any critique of his approach, but rather welcome it, even though it is not an approach that I myself adopt.
Turning to the issues of total biblical inerrancy, literalism and inspiration, by all means read what C. S. Lewis had to say. (I believe he touches on these issues in his Reflections on the Psalms when he takes up Psalm 137.) If you'd like quick snippets on his views, see excerpts from a couple of his letters right now: http://www.crivoice.org/lewisbib.html . Incidentally, the same site (the "Christian Resource Institute", a Wesleyan Christian site directed by Dennis Bratcher, and not at all to be confused with Hank Hanegraaf's basically fundamentalist "Christian Research Institute") also has an excellent overall critique of the total inerrancy doctrine at http://www.crivoice.org/inerrant.html - in fact, in general Bratcher has excellent articles, well-informed by faithful Christian scholarship, and fairly easy reading too.
Another set of online articles I like very much, dealing with these issues, are these by Telford Work, a theologian and teacher at Westmont College (a Christian liberal-arts college in California): http://www.westmont.edu/~work/faq/literalism.html and http://www.westmont.edu/~work/faq/factual.html and http://www.westmont.edu/~work/faq/characters.html . Telford writes very well and his comments are, I think, directed straight at people in your shoes, Kevin - I suggest you please read them.
I hope this helps. Above all, I urge you to hold on to your faith - do not agree with both fundamentalist literalists and atheistic skeptics that inerrancy is an essential of the faith and thus the faith should be discarded if inerrancy is falsified (the only difference between fundamentalist and skeptic being that the former thinks inerrancy is verified, while the latter thinks not). I will pray as you have requested.
Best regards,
Scott
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larris
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2004
Total Posts : 181
| Posted 4/5/2004 4:18 AM (GMT -6) | | Hi Kevin,
Be assured I’m praying for you, and I have been where you are at now, when you start to see that things are not exactly like you have been taught. I know that it was a real shock to my system to find out a lot of things that I had held in the deepest most sacred part of my heart as “the truth”, were not exactly as I had been taught, and most importantly had been led to think the Bible was teaching.
Yes I will pray for you, but please I beg you to consider something I am going to say.
“It is not the Bible itself that is in question here, but men’s teachings, doctrines, and opinions about the Bible.”
I have been avidly studying the scriptures for over 20 years now, and it is my one great love and passion in this world. I was originally brought into a ministry when I first became a believer, was totally committed to that ministry, and thoroughly trained in it’s theology, being a teacher and a minister of the Word, for 10 years. And all of the basic doctrines within Christianity, along with the verses of scripture that supported them, I could preach and witness to one or a multitude, verbatim and from the heart. And this I did, being fully persuaded that I held the truth of God’s Word.
However, in my 11the year, when I was 35 years old, I started feeling like, for all I knew, there was still something missing. I assumed that I just must not know the doctrines well enough, as far as application in life. Therefore I set out to RE-LEARN all I knew, from the standpoint of (and this is VERY important), from the standpoint of...
“How did my teachers come to their conclusions, regarding their “theology”?
I felt that if I studied their teachings from the standpoint of how they arrived at their conclusions, I would absolutely understand and know the scriptures as well as I firmly believed they did. And so after much prayer and preparation, I committed myself wholly to the study of these things.
I was not a “light” studier anyway, had attended college and spent two to three hours a day in God’s Word, if not many entire days. But now I committed myself to learning the Word above and beyond everything else in life. To eat it, drink it, sleep it and to train myself to meditate on it every waking moment, until I understood fully all of the things I believed, from the Word of God.
You said something that really struck me, when you said:
“It is hard to break away from the way I was raised and taught to see the Bible. ”
I like you, had been taught to “see the Bible” in a certain light. And it is with those teachings, on how I was taught to see, what you would call the “theology” or “how to study” the Bible, which teaches us how to “see” the Bible, that I began to take apart. NOT for the purpose of proving them wrong, but to establish them in my own mind as firmly as I believed my teachers knew them.
Now to do this, I realized that I not only had to have all the books and reference materials they must have had, and which they also recommended. But I also had to learn as much Greek as I could. And so I set out on this endeavor, treating it as a job, and working a secular job only enough to support myself. I tell you think just so you will know how much time I committed to the project, so that you will know that what I am telling you is not just off the top of my head. And for the next ten years I studied and read from 8 to 16 hours a day. I am not even slightly exaggerating when I tell you this.
But here is the thing. From the FIRST day I began this endeavor, I started seeing errors in what I had been taught. Errors here and there as in the wrong definition of a word, to the misquoting of a verse of scripture, out of it’s context. However when I first began to see these errors in these men’s teachings, I NEVER doubted them or what I had learned, I just believed that I must not understand enough yet, and that if I kept studying, eventually I would come to understand things in the same manner they did.
I had committed myself, along with taking apart the theological approach to studying the scriptures, to out and out studying the scriptures themselves. And I taught myself to read and retain large portions of scripture and understand everything in its context. And over the next three years after I began this endeavor, I started seeing many things that the Bible said, that just did not line up AT ALL, with what men had told me the Bible said, and led me to believe the Bible said through the use of various verses of scripture.
STILL after all of this, after 3 years and thousands of hours of study, I STILL never doubted my teachers, or training. That is until one day, when I sat down to write a friend and minister of the Word, who was of the same affiliation, concerning some of the things that I had been seeing over the previous three years. I had never actually sat down to write out and put together all I had studied and experienced during that time. It was just in a kind of disorganized jumble in my head.
I sat down to write what I thought was going to be a simple, if not actually short letter to my friend and three days later I was still writing. For upon sitting down to write all I had been seeing, all of the pieces started fitting together, and my eyes were opened as I came to the full realization that much of what I had been taught and “led to see”, by those who taught me, was to put it bluntly “A LIE”. And if not an out and out lie, then only a “half-truth”.
I mean I had been seeing this for three years, yet all that time I still never doubted those who taught me, I just kept thinking they must have their reasons, and eventually I would understand it all as I kept studying. You have to realize how committed I was to the ministry of which I was involved, and the love and respect I had for the “men of God” who founded and taught the Bible. Not because of them, but because I was totally convinced that they served Christ, and taught the truth of the Bible.
I was what one could consider by this time a “mature”, and “knowledgeable” Christian. Yet here I found myself in a position, where every belief I held most dear was now in question. I was devastated and shocked beyond belief, and what’s more fearful of even thinking such things as I thought. And yet I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that what I was now seeing was the truth. Not so much that I knew the truth itself, but that I knew the truth that what I had been taught was not the truth. In other words, I was then not at a place where I knew the truth, but rather had come to a place where I knew WHAT THE TRUTH WAS NOT!
And I knew it WAS NOT much of what they had led me to believe. This is a VERY scary place to be! Because for the most part we hold this sense way down in our subconscious that to question the doctrines and teachings of our denomination or Church is to question GOD HIMSELF. And this subconscious belief if not there by “accident”, but is subtle put there through the teachings we receive on just how we are supposed to “see the Bible”, that is, how we are to study it, it’s theology. I am not speaking about the actual belief or doctrine itself, but with the method of how the come up with that doctrine.
Now though I fully realized that the men who had taught me were in error, I never once doubted the Bible itself. You stated something regarding the doctrine of “inerrancy”.
“It is hard to accept because of the teachings that if the inerrancy of the Bible falls then all of the teachings in the Bible are suspect.
Please consider what I say. It is not the “inerrancy of the Bible” that is in question, but the “teaching” of men about the Bible. What I have learned over the years, is that the doctrine of inerrancy is not meant to protect the Bible, but rather “the teachings of men”, about the Bible. By leading you away from the actual study of the scriptures themselves, into the study of all kinds of theologies, they convince you through their systems, that “THEIR teachings” about the Bible are true. Because in essence “theology” is what teaches you how you should “see the Bible”.
Even those who are not literally educated in theology are fed a false knowledge on how they should study and look at the Bible, through the systems and methods of theology.
You said:
It is hard to break away from the way I was raised and taught to see the Bible. Yet I know that there are writings which are not true.
Yes there are “writings” that are not true. But it is not the “writings” of the Bible, but the writings of men about the Bible, that are in question, and not true. You said also:
“This does not mean that I am throwing out Jesus or my belief in Christianity.”
The only place we really learn of Jesus is in the Bible and he said of himself:
John 8:31
Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed; And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
If Jesus said this, then he must have had the ability to leave us some form of written document, that we would have been able to rely on. The problem is not with Jesus, nor with that document, but again with MEN. Men of whom the very document it said of itself would arise called “false teachers”. You, I or anyone can easily take verses of scripture out of context and present a false picture of what the Bible is actually trying to convey. And it is especially easy to do this to people who from the beginning do not know the Bible and also trust us to know it. And this is the state in which we all initially come to the Bible.
At first when I had learned that all of my teachers had basically lied to me, I was VERY upset and VERY angry with them. However over the next several years, I learned that they for the most part had also been sincere and believed with all of their heart they were teaching the truth and “seeing the Bible” in the right light. This is because they were taught in the same manner that they had taught me. And the errors in their teachings were those that had been developed over the past 2000 years and handed down from generation to generation. I learned this and overcame my anger at their deception, because I never gave up on learning God’s Word and trusting that if I continued in the Word of Jesus Christ, that I would eventually become his disciple and I would eventually know the truth. Now interesting about this is that from the moment I dropped my “teachers”, the Holy Spirit was able to begin to guide me, into knowledge of the truth. And that journey continues to today.
You said:
Right now I am wrestling with how to come to terms with my new understanding. When everything is black and white it is very easy.
Please if there is one thing, that you might take away from what I have said here, please consider what I am about to say now. Never, never get complacent with your understanding. What I mean by this, is always be open to realize that what you know, what you think you understand, can always change as you commit yourself to John 8:31, to continue in the Word, of Christ, via the Bible and to be his disciple and then come to a knowledge of the truth. If you don’t allow yourself, to get to that place where you think you understand it, he is always able to ENLARGE your understanding in every subject of his word.
When I realized that everything I thought I understood was suspect if not an out and out lie, as I stated, I found I was at the place where I knew what the truth was NOT, but as yet did not exactly know what the truth was. Therefore I understand fully how you feel, especially about “expressing this new understanding”. Let me say that it will not be easy, because many people who are convinced that what they know is the truth, will not like what you have to say, or even that you doubt. This is because when you question, it leads them to question, and people hold these beliefs in the sacred part of their heart, and it scares them to consider that what they hold most dear might not be the truth. No one likes to get his foundation shaken. And that is really what is being shaken here, the foundational teachings of Christ, that men have laid in our hearts. But we must remember, that it is not the foundational teaching of Christ HIMSELF, but only those things that MEN had said about him and his Word.
Since that time, when I came to the realization that how I had been led to “see the Bible”, was in error, I have discovered many beliefs and thoughts in my head that were not right on and accurate with what the scriptures were actually trying to convey. What once was a traumatic experience is not pretty much old hat. And as I study and learn more I am always finding a thought or understanding in my head, that just dose not line up with God’s actual Word. But now I just go...”Oh there’s another one.”
It depends on what a person wants. Do they just want knowledge in general, or do they want the TRUTH. The TRUTH is available to those who seek it with their whole heart, and there is nothing more rewarding than, just you and God, sitting there studying his Word and having him guide you into a genuine and true understanding of his Word. You see, there is the way the Church sees it, there is the way you or I see it, and there is the way that God truly meant it. And this is one thing I said to God many years ago, when I told him “God, I know the way the Church teaches this, and I know what I think it says, but show me what you really meant when YOU said it. He has NEVER let me down, though many times he has had to take me through extreme period of UN-LEARNING, to finally get me to the place where I could accept or even see what he was really trying to say. Because so much of what we are taught by men, cloud the reality of what the scripture is really trying to convey.
And here is one more thing, NEVER be afraid of NOT KNOWING. It is better to NOT KNOW on a subject, and to stay in that state, until such a time as you have studied enough of the scripture to form a real opinion to the matter. However it’s OK to say, “Well I think I know, but that could change as I learn more.” So many times I have thought I “KNEW”, just to find as I learned more, that there was more to it, or that I was just plain wrong. Also never be afraid to be WRONG. Use the mind that God gave you to think for yourself, and to question. Though believe me this is not the easy road, and many will try and dissuade you from taking it.
The doctrine of inerrancy regarding “the teachings of men”, not the Bible, is there because men hate to be WRONG, and especially they hate to think that those great men upon whom their denominations are founded could have been WRONG. Men over the centuries, and mostly well meaning, have studied the scriptures and made wrong assumptions and calculations, which never got corrected, until someone had to leave their ministries, and strike out on their own. That is basically how we got all these denominations. However they just never kept going, and lauded men to the standpoint of being infallible. It’s as if each denomination holds its founder as speaking like the Pope. I guess that was a bad habit to get out of even after the reformation.
Take care and God’s blessing on the new life you are about to undertake.
In Christ,
larris
PS. I like your saying: Some people are like cement. All mixed up and permanently set.
I believe it goes with much of what I have been saying here, and shows something about what is important to your heart. We need to be "soft clay", for the potters hands, and not cement. Unfortunately the enemy has cemented many beliefs into our understanding, that we must now take the jack hammer to, and that my friend is very HARD WORK. Just don't let anyone come along and dump their cement in your work area.
God bless.
"If you continue (abide and live) in my word, then you shall be my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." Jesus Christ. (John 8:31) | | Back to Top | | |
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lbeck
Registered Member
Date Joined Aug 2004
Total Posts : 11
| Posted 8/16/2004 3:01 AM (GMT -6) | | I don't know if this thread is still active. I just registered but have bookmarked the page -- will return from time-to-time to catch up on the readers' perspective on this interesting topic. There’s a lot to read so it may take a while, and my perspective may already have been articulated here.
I am a Christian, but also a scientist. I've always been interested in factual dialog on the subject of science and religion. I have come to the conclusion after many years of agonizing over apparent inconsistencies that the two domains are separate. God gave us a brain with which to reason, but I believe that there will always be some mysteries that we have to accept without knowing the solution of the equation a+b+c=?.
For my 2 domains conclusion I claim the scripture that many use to defend the inerrancy of scripture – 2 Timothy 3:16, which states (paraphrased) that “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That man may be complete, thoroughly equipped for all good works.“ There is nothing in that passage that infers that we should use the Bible as a science book. I believe that the Bible gives us everything that we need to understand God’s relationship to man, man’s responsibility to God, and man’s relationship to man.
Having said that, it amazes me at just how closely the Biblical creation account parallels the scientific account of creation. Both start with a void or chaos without form, then light being separated from darkness (i.e., the big-bang theory of the coalescing of matter to form planets which revolve around a central source of light). Then there is the separation of water from land, the formation of lower forms of animal life first, then human forms. This flow of existence is amazing to me, given that Genesis was written long before the scientific concepts that we have today. I believe that the Bible intended to give the message that there is an omnipotent creator that ordered the universe, not to give a cookbook for exactly how it was done. When we argue whether it was 6 literal days we are using the Bible for a purpose for which it was never intended (according to 2 Tim. 3:16-17).
I take the same approach when considering for instance the book of Jonah. Atheists/agnostics leap with joy at the scientific impossibility that man can live inside the belly of a large fish. I choose not to debate the science of the account, but the purpose for which the book was written. The message of the book was that Jonah was given clear instruction from God to go to Nineveh, Jonah rebelled, and God refused to take no for an answer.
BTW, I never try to convince the believer that he is wrong if he believes in a totally faith-based account of creation or the scriptures. I have a dear friend who believes that dinosaurs are a hoax, and that they never could have existed since they are not mentioned in the Bible. My reason for this approach is that I am a New Testament Christian who believes in the concept of salvation by grace. Belief in the inerrancy of Scripture (which I do, with the “separate domains” concept above), is not a salvation issue. Having a child-like faith is in some ways better, at least maybe more comfortable, than questioning. However, I do believe that it is wrong to infer that salvation is reserved only for those who adhere to these non-essential beliefs (e.g., ultra-literalists).
I have another friend whose daughter just received a degree in geology. He is tormented because she believes that the Earth is billions of years old. He unfortunately has convinced her that she cannot be a Christian and believe such heresy. She apparently adheres to his interpretation of incompatibility of beliefs and shows no sign of returning to her Christian roots.
I hope to return here to expand on this line of reasoning, time permitting, but wanted to throw it out now as my contribution to this debate which is unlikely ever to end.
Glad I found this forum.
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Sahid
Megistered Rember
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013
| Posted 8/16/2004 8:19 PM (GMT -6) | | Sorry, I didn't mean to write you off. Here's what I think. The Bible doesn't have to be a science book to be factually accurate. This won't do the idea justice, but here it is. Science points us to the big bang. Creation most likely happened that way, unless God has made the universe to be deliberately deceptive. There is a point as scientist project backwards when they can't make good predictions because the math just breaks down. This point is not the big bang itself, but a tiny faction of a second after it. At this point time would be measured as moving much "slower" than it is measured from our current point of view. This is because of relativity. When there's a lot of mass smashed into a small place, time is perceived as moving "slower". If we use this frame of reference, this measurement of time, the universe, according to Dr. Schoeder, is approximately 5.9999999 days old. The sixth day is almost finished. Schoeder thinks that Gen 1 is creation from this point of view. He thinks the rest of Genesis, when it says "these are the generations", is from mankind's point of view. According to him, the universe is both 15 million years and 6 days old. Having different measurements is reasonable, because that's how are universe was made. Relativity is real. I'm not good enough at math or physics to check his work, but he is an accomphished scientist with a good reputation.
Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre | | Back to Top | | |
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