1. Our understanding of the scientific data is incorrect.
2. Our understanding of the Biblical data is incorrect.
3. Both 1 and 2.
What bothers me is that option 1 is generally the only acceptable option, at least in the conversations I've had with the pastors and teachers at my church. There seems to be a basic denial of the the fact that the words of the Bible (biblical data) must be interpreted to be understood.
When I asked my pastor who gave a sermon on this topic what we should do about the cases where science clearly teaches something contrary to "what the Bible teaches", he answered this way:
"I believe that where they disagree the Bible has it right. It may take science a while to catch up and has from time to time but I go with the Bible."
With all due respect, this seems completely crazy to me. The implication that we can't possibly be wrong about our interpretation of the Bible seems arrogant to me. Now, call me a heretic if you wish, but given the obscure nature of the biblical texts, and given equal time and effort studying the data, might we be MORE likely to be correct in our conclusions about scientific data, than about biblical data?
Is there some mystical force guiding our interpretation of the Bible, and not of science? Some may reply: "Yes! The Holy Spirit!" But if the Holy Spirit is a significant force in guiding Christians in their interpretation of the Bible, then God is intentionally sowing confusion in His church. The reality is that Christianity has an incredibly diverse array of beliefs (all based on biblical interpretation), and they can't all be right.
“In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.” -Augustine, in De Genesi ad litteram, 415AD. [source]
"If a position is true, every avenue of reflection ought to point in its direction." -Greg Boyd [source]
4 comments:
After I listened to those two sermons I was wondering if you were going to write about that topic. I just had to be patient.
I found that when people say that science and the Bible agree it is because:
1. Their understanding of the scientific data is incorrect.
2. Their understanding of the Biblical data is incorrect.
3. Both 1 and 2.
To borrow from you. People are trying to prove the reliability of the Bible by trying to show that some claims are "scientific," and that there is no way people would have known about it then. They do this by stating that something was "discovered" in more modern times and that ancient peoples would have been unaware of this important discovery. Sometimes these things are enthoncentrically based assumptions, that others are unaware of certain knowledge: we are more "advanced" therefore ancient people could not have thought that.
If we take one of his examples of the importance of blood to life we see how this works. The claim goes like this:
1.Lev 17:11 says "For the life of the flesh is in the blood..."
2.How the circulatory system worked wasn't discovered until 1628 when William Harvey published De Motu Cordis.
3.Ancient people didn't know about blood circulation, and how the body is supplied with nutrients by the blood.
4.Therefore the Bible saying "the life of the flesh is in the blood" is divinely given knowledge, and the Bible is reliable.
However, the Bible is not making any claim about the circulatory system or how and why blood is necessary, just that it is necessary for life and without it you die. Ancient peoples had that knowledge, they knew if you slit the throat of an animal the blood pours out and the animal dies, or a woman hemorrhages during childbirth and dies. The claim implies that until a process is understood that people don't know that some part of the process is important; like if you don't know how the digestive system works then food is not important. Knowledge of one thing does not preclude knowledge of the other.
So in trying to prove the reliability of the Bible they don't understand science and how scientific knowledge is gathered, and they make assumptions about what ancient people knew or what they needed to know to write a text, and imply that God gave them some special knowledge.
I found this the case with most of his points, but when it comes to the reliability of the Bible proving that it is historically or even scientifically accurate does not mean that it is spiritually trustworthy, which is the point they want to prove. Though a book that is inaccurate in those areas is most likely spiritually untrustworthy. I have not found scientific claims in the Bible, and the ones people point out to support or to degrade it are normally interpretive based on what they already to believe the Bible to be and to prove that belief.
Amen, Mark. Great comments. I agree totally. One of the hardest things for us to do is to avoid seeing things we already believe everywhere we look. On one hand that's a good thing (it grows our faith) but it's also bad if we have never looked critically at what we believe.
AUGUSTINE'S BIBLICAL ASTRONOMY
AUGUSTINE: “. . . the firmament was made between the waters above and beneath, and was called ‘Heaven,’ in which firmament the stars were made on the fourth day.” [City of God chapter 11.5-9]
Augustine noted that Genesis 1 depicts waters above the stars. He even cited the psalm about “waters above the heavens.”
In his work, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Augustine wrote:
“The term ‘firmament’ does not compel us to imagine a stationary heaven: we may understand this name as given to indicate not that it is motionless but that it is solid and that it constitutes an impassable boundary between the water above and the waters below.”
Augustine adds:
"Whatever the nature of the waters [above the firmament], we must believe in them, for the authority of Scripture is greater than the capacity of man’s mind.”
Augustine’s view was echoed by Martin Luther as late as the fifteenth century:
“Scripture simply says that the moon, the sun, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven, below and above which . . . are the waters. . . . We Christians must be different from the philosophers in the way we think about the causes of things. And if some are beyond our comprehension like those before us concerning the waters above the heavens, we must believe them rather than wickedly deny them or presumptuously interpret them in conformity with our understanding”
[Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 1, Lectures on Genesis, ed. Janoslaw Pelikan (St. Louis, MI: Concordia, 1958), pp. 30, 42, 43].
Augustine also believed that man had only been on the earth a couple thousand years.
Augustine went on to say (in the same book), that we should reject doctrines that are contrary to scripture. I contend that the ToE and and old earth are both contrary. Ex. 20:11, the 10 commandments written by the finger of God, says the earth was made in 6 days. Jesus also says that God made them male and female and that the days of Noah are like it will be at the coming of the son of Man. Heb. 11 lists a lot of the characters of Genesis 1-6 as real people with real faith. There is a problem in having death before sin and plants before the sun. The list of doctrinal errors goes on and on. So let's finish the Augustine doctrine.
"...a man is not in any difficulty in making a reply according to his faith ... to those who try to defame our Holy Scripture. ... when they produce from any of their books a theory contrary to Scripture ... either we shall have some ability to demonstrate that it is absolutely false, or at least we ourselves will hold it so without any shadow of a doubt. ...let us choose [the doctrine] which appears as certainly the meaning intended by the author. ... For it is one thing to fail to recognize the primary meaning of the writer, and another to depart from the norms of religious belief."
http://college.holycross.edu/faculty/alaffey/other_files/Augustine-Genesis1.pdf
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