October 4, 2011
-
The Stopping Point
Dear Jonathan: I don’t think anyone can make a (reasonable) argument for the age of the earth from Scripture. If you find one that (a) uses a hermeneutic consistent with a God who is a loving being and doesn’t deceive people just for fun, and (b) is consistent with observations humans have made about the earth, then write me a note. Otherwise I shall continue to think you’re brainwashed. (You may continue to think the same about me.
Or just that I’m closed-minded. But I was raised in that world and, once I looked at it, it made about as much sense as Santa. To me, anyway.)(Charlie)
Charles: Brainwashed sounds a bit harsh for either side. I do believe that our presuppositions, however firmly or loosely held, are steering how we interpret Scripture. You see Scripture as man’s (for the most part, correct) opinions about God and man. That’s not what it is. It is special revelation given from loving God who stoops down to our level out of grace. And as such, our attempts to understand the world will not trump God’s revelation.
With the proper framing, we recognize that God spoke through Paul in a way he has not spoken through you and me. God spoke through Paul regarding an event in which we all died (in the person, Adam) *in direct parallel* to an event in which we are all made alive (in the person, Christ). Seeing the clear point of the passage is the symmetry, it is paramount to a forfeiture of the reality of the cross to deny a historical Fall — a point in which death, curse, and pain entered as a result of sin. A progression of evolution through cycles of death presume the curse prior to the sin; the punishment before the crime.
This is not an overly literalist view. It’s what Christians are committed to. If we didn’t actually Fall, then Christ didn’t actually accomplish anything in his death and resurrection. Christians, however, say Christ did. It is a non-Christian paradigm to reduce Scripture to man’s word backed by the life of the Church. If it is, somehow, just that, we’re just talking about human psychological phenomena and the science of general religion. Bullocks.
If man’s tendency is to repress the revelation of the very attributes of God with his own unrighteousness, how could man’s understanding trump the clear revelation of God’s unfathomable glory and wisdom?
(Jonathan)
Comments (2)
Since I first began posting (and reading) on Xanga, I have received a lot of encouragement and guidance from (Jonathan’s) posts here. You have been a blessing to me Jonathan for your wisdom and demonstrated love of God. You have also been most patient with me who, though a lot older than you, have so much to learn from you, my younger brother!
Some of these difficult passages in the Bible, I just take by faith, not knowing the full meaning of them. I know for example that God created the world and all that is in it in six days and on the seventh day God rested. Just what that means, I only ’know in part’ but rest in the assurance that one day God will fully reveal to me all that I need to know.
I am thankful to know, too, that some of the wisest men who have walked this earth, men like Sir Isaac Newton, Pascal, and others, were godfearing men who worshiped God sincerely and took His Word seriously. I am happy to be in their company. You have mentioned the great apostle Paul! And there are many, many others. In fact a ‘great cloud of witnesses!’ We are far from being alone.
(David)
I’ve just finished reading the above correspondence and I’m reminded of God’s injunction, in several places in the Scriptures, that we are to
meditate in His Word day and night. It is to be our last thought on going to bed and our first on rising in the morning.
God’s thoughts are virtually unfathomable to us mortals and we can only understand what He graciously reveals to those mortals who search reverently and diligently “on bended knee” as it were for His truth.
(David)