After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the Bible in a Postmodern Age, Part 5

July 1, 2010
Category: Guest Features

"Science and the Sacred" is pleased to feature essays from various guest voices in the science-and-religion dialogue. Today's entry was written by Kenton Sparks. Kenton Sparks is professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University and author of several books, including his latest God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship , in which he argues that evangelical biblical scholarship has largely failed in not appropriating critical scholarship as it should.

This is the fifth of a seven-part series, which has been adapted from a Scholarly Essay of the same title. The first entry can be read here.

In his previous post, Sparks pointed out the implications that Christ’s human nature should have on our understanding of Scripture. In today’s blog, Sparks relates the falleness of Creation with the non-Biblistic inerrancy of Scripture.

A Key Analogy: The Problem of Creation and the Problem of Scripture

The accommodation theology of the Church Fathers and Calvin holds that Scripture is God’s word expressed by human beings and that, where errors exist, these are not God’s but rather his accommodation or condescension to the finite, fallen human condition. If we then set to one side these instances of accommodation, we can embrace the rest of Scripture as truth that leads to a coherent understanding of God and God’s voice. This is the accommodationist approach, in a nutshell.

Two problems persist in this hermeneutical tactic. First, accommodation does not adequately address the so-called “dark side” of Scripture. In the case of biblical genocide, for example, it would have to argue that God “accommodated” himself to the ancient view that enemies should be slaughtered wholesale. I don’t think that this solution is much more satisfying than a solution that simply says God teaches us to slaughter our enemies.

The second problem is that accommodation errantly imagines that the problems in Scripture arise only in discrete circumstances. But if the insights of Practical Realism and traditional orthodoxy are right, then it follows that all human viewpoints in Scripture (not merely a few here and there) are miss-shaped in some ways or others by the broken human condition. So, though the patristic use of accommodation provides an important clue for our theological work, respecting the problem of Scripture it is not a solution that wholly suits our postmodern situation. We will have to move in the patristic direction but travel the path farther than they did.

Let us begin with God’s creation. It is beautiful … in fact, unbelievable beautiful. Yet it also includes terrors and evils that are unspeakable … rapes, murders and wars … famine, disease and disaster … pain indescribable. Given that God has created everything that exists, how do Christians avoid the possible (some skeptics would say inevitable) implication that the blame for creation’s evils and horrors can be pinned on God? Following Paul’s lead in Rom 8:20-22, Christians dogmatically assert that the cosmos is broken because of human sin.²² So it is not God, but human beings, who are finally culpable for the messy side of creation. Creation is good and beautiful because it is God’s creation, but warped and broken because of human influence.

To make the point clearer, imagine with me a beautiful painting by Renoir or Monet. And then imagine that someone seizes the painting, rips it from its frame, crumples it up and stomps on it for about ten minutes. What does one end up with? One ends up with a beautiful painting that is everywhere warped and twisted. In some places the former beauty of the unmolested painting is more visible than in others, but there is no quarter of the painting that has escaped the damage. This, I would say, suitably describes God’s creation. It is beautiful but also broken, and in such a way that one cannot really separate what’s beautiful from what’s not. Because it is the good thing itself that is warped and damaged.

And now my main point in this part of the paper. Just as we can maintain the created order is God’s good creation warped by the fall, in a similar way we can maintain that Scripture—given through and to a fallen world through fallen men—is both beautiful and broken. No less than the creation, Scripture’s human authors, and the book that they wrote, stands in need of redemption.

The Redemption of Scripture: Biblical Examples

Scripture is a casualty of the fallen cosmos. I have adduced evidence for this assertion by highlighting numerous tensions and contradictions in the Bible, including ethical tensions, and also by demonstrating the some of the best-known Church leaders in history have admitted that Scripture indeed reflects divine accommodations to humanity’s fallen condition.

But if these assertions are theologically valid, then we should be able to adduce direct and explicit biblical evidence that Scripture is in need of redemption and that God is working to redeem it. I believe that this evidence is readily available in Scripture. There are numerous examples that I could site, but here I will refer to only one, from the New Testament. (I give an example from the Old Testament in my essay.)

Consider these examples from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt chs. 5-7):

It was also said [by Moses], “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Matt 5:31-32).

You have heard that it was said [by Moses],”'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also (Matt 5:38-39).

You have heard that it was said [by Moses], “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:43-44).

In all three of these instances, Jesus quotes the law of Moses and then offers, as his own teaching, something that negates it or even amounts to its opposite. He takes a particularly strong stand against the Law’s violent streak, such as its legal demand that Israel return evil for evil by killing its Canaanite enemies.

The sermon appeared so contrary to the Law that Jesus had to add a word of clarification: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). Though we are Christians and of course believe him on this point, we cannot help but ask: How can it be that Jesus fulfills the Law by reversing its teachings?

We are able to get an answer to this question by attending closely to other texts in the same gospel, the gospel of Matthew. We are particularly fortunate that, in one of his confrontations with Jewish leaders, Jesus repeats and expands on his teaching that divorce should not be permitted as the Law of Moses suggests. We have at our disposal both the challenge of Jewish leaders and Jesus’ thoughtful response to them:

They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”

According to Jesus, in this case, at least, the Law of Moses did not offer the Jews a proper path for healthy living. It offered instead a regulation designed and suited for hard-hearted, unspiritual persons. So it follows that the fulfillment of this law amounted to what Keith Ward has called sublation … to its reversal or negation. For unlike Moses, Jesus did not permit divorce for any and every reason.

The Bible, with its two Testaments, plays a vital role in God’s redemptive work. Taken as a whole, it is a steady and valuable guide for God’s people as they seek to know him and to love their neighbors. But ultimately, the redemption of both Testaments, and of the cosmos and humanity, is accomplished by the death, burial, resurrection, ascension and return of our savior, Jesus Christ. Until that final day comes, we shall continue to struggle with the problems of pain and suffering, and with the problems in Scripture. These are our problems that Christ has graciously taken upon himself.

In his next post, Sparks will discuss how to approach Scripture in light of this revised understanding of inerrancy.

Notes

1. Santmire has argued that two early Christian theologians, Irenaeus and Augustine, denied that the created order was fallen. This would not be a surprise given that both were engaged in heated debate with Gnostics who held that the creation was actually evil, but in the end I don’t find Santimire’s argument wholly persuasive. And, even if he is right, the views of Irenaeus and Augustine have not substantially influenced traditional Christian thinking on the creation. See H. Paul Santmire, The Travail of Nature (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 31-73. For the standard view, see article III.400 in Catechism of the Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994), 101

Filed Under:

scripture, bible, inerrancy, hemeneutics, theodicy, creation, evil, death, Christianity, theology

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Mairnéalach - #19691

July 1^st 2010

Christ’s fulfillment of the law is certainly the orthodox way to understand all of the moral imperatives, in both old and new testaments. It has to be dogmatically stated that, until the incarnation, everything was a shadow—and from the incarnation unto the present time, there is a fullness of revelation and understanding. I cannot buy into the “redemptive arc” or “trajectory” arguments that take the apostle’s teachings into all sorts of bizarre and novel directions.

However, allowing our ethical sensibilities to predetermine what theory of scripture to take is fraught with unseen hazards. Consider, for a moment, the gross injustice of a God sending his own innocent son up for sacrifice. Oh, sure, you benefited from it, as a believer. That’s great, really. But just think about it. It’s just about as polite, and acceptable as… I dunno… genocide, perhaps?
Amy - #19692

July 1^st 2010

Kenton,
I appreciate your post and its efforts to understand scripture in light of the human imprint on it. I have a question about the fallenness of the cosmos. Can you explain specifically what you mean by it and how sin entering the world can warp and break everything in creation?
O. Bower - #19694

July 1^st 2010

Creation and human sin preesents the greatest impasse for me. Scripture clearly indicates we humans have played the role as cosmos warpers, however I cannot help but involve God as well. I would never say God somehow sinned and therefore creation has its present state. However, He must have allowed such a fate either by giving creation and humans some inherent connectedness that once severed led to creation’s fallenness, had creation fallen initially (we could debate what fallen means here), or some other explanation. Dr. Sparks, could you offer a viewpoint here? I’ve honestly never heard a decent explanation outside a free process response—which I would say doesn’t pin creation’s initial “fall” on humans, but it does leave room for our ill deeds to it.
HornSpiel - #19697

July 1^st 2010

Kenton,

Thanks for the post. I found it quite insightful and helpful. The concept that the Scripture need to be redeemed is a new one for me.

I have held for some time that Scriptures can be thought of as a transcriptionof the Logos into human language and cognitive categories. I have found it helpful to think of Scripture as 00 divine and 0 human, just as is Jesus, the incarnationof the Logos into human flesh. Here incarnation and transcription are analogous processes but operate on different levels.

I am wondering if you think my analogy holds up. Do you know of any support in theological tradition for my view? If so, would you say it lends support to the idea that Scripture needs to be redeemed?
HornSpiel - #19698

July 1^st 2010

Oops—in the above post I thought I put in 0 (one hundred percent) two times but it appeared as 00 and 0.
Martin Rizley - #19704

July 1^st 2010

Kenton, I’m glad you quoted Jesus’ about “fulfilling” the Law and the Prophets, for there is a difference between ‘fulfilling’ Moses’ laws and ‘reversing’ them, as if particular laws were pointing people away from God’s righteousness to unrighteousness. Jesus never suggests such a thing. He does ‘reverse’ the traditional Pharisaical interpretations of the Law which limited the law’s import (e. g., limiting the prohibition of adultery to the outward act only) or which went beyond the Law’s import (as if the Law mandated divorce or mandated showing hatred to one’s enemy, which it did not); Jesus corrected these rabbinical perversions of the Law, and at the same time, He divested the law of certain covenantal and temporal provisions based on Israel’s nature as a theocratic community that was of a spiritually “mixed” character. For example, the Mosaic regulation of divorce which ‘permitted’ hard-hearted men to put away their wives for reasons other than adultery was based on the recognition that many in that community were of ‘uncircumcised heart;’ that provision did not express God’s ideal for married life (continued)
Pete Enns - #19708

July 1^st 2010

Martin,

Think: dietary laws, sabbath observance, treatment of Gentiles, temple observance, and many other issues.
Martin Rizley - #19710

July 1^st 2010

but it was designed to prevent a greater evil—namely, unregenerate men abusing or even killing wives they could not divorce! Under the New Covenant, however, God expects something more of His regenerate people who are filled with the Spirit of God—so a higher standard prevails in the New Covenant community than the ‘civil code’ which governed the theocracy of Israel. At its heart, however, the Law of Moses called for the very highest of ethical motivations—love for God and neighbor, even those neighbors whom one regarded as one’s ‘enemies’ (Exodus 23:4-5). One was not justified in harboring a lustful, covetous, vengeful, or hateful attitude toward anyone under the law of Moses; the rabbis could justify such attitudes only by ignoring the ethical imperative which lay at the heart of the Law. So, while there were things that were temporary in the Law—civil and ceremonial provisions destined to last only until the ‘time of reformation’ (Hebrews 9:10)—the law of Moses was based on the twin principles of love to God and neighbor—the very principles Jesus established as ‘law’ for His people under the New Covenant (Matt. 22:34-40).
Martin Rizley - #19714

July 1^st 2010

Regarding the treatment of Gentiles under the Law of Moses, Gentile proselytism was always permitted, although it is true that such converts, depending on their ethnic descent, enjoyed a ‘secondary status’ in the community. That is one of the ways in which the New Covenant is superior to the Old; in Christ, there is “neither Jew nor Greek.” If a Gentile proselyte continued to worship false gods, however, he ran the risk of being executed as an idolater—as did any Israelite who embraced those gods. Under the New Covenant, excommunication for idolatry has replaced execution, because the church, unlike Israel, is not a theocracy in which the sword of civil power is used to punish false religion. Moreover, the cultic regulations that were designed to create a ‘wall of separation’ between Jew and Gentile (such as the dietary laws and Israel’s sacred calendar) has likewise been abolished. What remains is the law of love, and those moral imperatives that are intrinsic to the practice of love—the principles we see in the Decalogue. So the two covenants, Old and New, are very different, yet they both reflect the holy, righteous, and loving character of God.
Kirkwood - #19741

July 1^st 2010

The premise that the scriptures stand in need of redemption, opens the door wide for their ready dismissal. We regard Paul as on track when he says that there is no difference between “male and female” —- but should we not like what Paul’s says about homosexuality… or just one wife…we might write him off as a fallen communicator with a corrupted message. Then every person is left to the task of deciding which, or in what manner he or she will hear the scriptures. This in turn, means that fallen hearers, will simply hear whatever they will (or won’t).
Kimberly - #19769

July 1^st 2010

I’m rather concerned with the “fall” of humanity and that this somehow lets God off the hook. The reality is that if God created us and the serpent and he is omniscient, then he knew exactly what was going to take place before he ever created a thing. Which means that the very act of creating things the way he did makes him ultimatly responsible for everything good and evil. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
R Hampton - #19770

July 1^st 2010

Then every person is left to the task of deciding which, or in what manner he or she will hear the scriptures

Welcome to the post-Reformation world!
Dunemeister - #19795

July 1^st 2010

@Kirkwood #19741:

Why should the scripture’s need for redemption “open wide the door for their dismissal”? I stand in need of redemption; is it open for anyone to “dismiss” me? Everyone in authority of any sort within the church stands in need of redemption. Are we to dismiss them? The apostles stood in need of redemption even post ascension. Did Christ dismiss them? If not, why should we dismiss the scriptures, which, since they were produced by followers of the apostles who were in turn in need of redemption, themselves stand in need of redemption?

Hope that makes sense….
Dunemeister - #19796

July 1^st 2010

“This in turn, means that fallen hearers, will simply hear whatever they will (or won’t).”

That has always been true and nothing in Kenton’s argument makes the situation better or worse.
Kent Sparks - #19811

July 1^st 2010

Hello. Let me begin with Kimberly’s post ... Her analysis follows the classical logic of the skeptics, which holds that, in the end, whatever is true of the cosmos is God’s responsibility.

I would say that this one question ... Is God responsible for all that’s ill in the cosmos? ... is the fundamental question that we face. My answer (and the standard Christian answer) is “no,” but it is not an answer that can be proved. It is, to my mind, a better answer than the idea that God is the author of evil (God is a snook) or that God does not exist (so evil is an illusion).

Amy wrote: “Can you explain specifically what you mean by it and how sin entering the world can warp and break everything in creation?”

No, I can’t explain that. But this is the traditional Christian understanding of why the cosmos seems to be a troubled place.

more in a moment ...
Kent Sparks - #19813

July 1^st 2010

Mairnéalach wrote: “However, allowing our ethical sensibilities to predetermine what theory of scripture to take is fraught with unseen hazards ... Consider, for a moment, the gross injustice of a God sending his own innocent son up for sacrifice ... It’s just about as polite, and acceptable as… I dunno… genocide, perhaps?

You’re right ... Killing Jesus was an injustice akin in some respects to genocide. That was and is the power of God at work ... what we intended for evil, God used for Good ... he saved us in the very act by which we, bruatally killed God.

As you might guess, I do no subscribe to anything like the penal substitution theory of the atonement but would prefer to embrace the older, more venerable Christus Victor approach the the early fathers.

As for your concern that my approach is “fraught with unseen hazards,” and I can only say, in my defense, that my own work shows how often an approach to Scripture that embraces biblical genocide had led to terrible hazards and injustices.
Kent Sparks - #19822

July 1^st 2010

“The premise that the scriptures stand in need of redemption, opens the door wide for their ready dismissal.”

To this I’d say, yes and no. True, to admit that Scripture stands in need of redemption is to be open, theologically, to the idea that one cannot simply embrace as wholly true everything that it says. On the other hand, one could make the same argument against any approach to Scripture. For instance, if one believes that God cannot and does not change his mind, will this not open the door wide to dismiss texts that depict God changing his mind? If one believes is an Arminian, does this not open the door wide to dismiss what Paul says in Romans 9? If one is strongly Reformed, does this not open the door to universalism, since God is not willing for any to perish?

There is no such thing as a pure, unbiased approach to Scripture ... all of us end “dismiss,” in some ways or others, those texts that trouble us.
Martin Rizley - #19832

July 1^st 2010

Kent,
You say that you “do not subscribe to anything like the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement.” Are you saying that the concept of penal substitutionary atonement is not taught in the Bible, or are you saying that this is one of the ideas taught in the Bible from which the Bible needs to be “redeemed”?
Bryan Hodge - #19861

July 1^st 2010

Kent,

If we emphasize the human and cosmological condition in the ability of something to remain untainted, how does one go about determining whether his view of Scripture (in regard to its perfection or lack thereof) is a part of the truth of God coming through or the inevitable error that humans are prone to produce? In other words, how does one know if his errant view of Scripture is not also a part of the error of our human condition—the problem being our understanding rather than the text we are evaluating? I would think it would be less of a chance that it is Scripture than ourselves, since Scripture at least has a claim of divine inspiration, our views do not. How would you answer this question without appealing to a more fallible system of interpretation than the communication of Scripture supplies? I’m just curious how you work this out. I’m not looking for trouble or anything.
Kent Sparks - #19904

July 2^nd 2010

Hi Bryan,

“how does one go about determining whether his view of Scripture (in regard to its perfection or lack thereof) is a part of the truth of God coming through or the inevitable error that humans are prone to produce?”

How does one, when reading any book, determine whether the book is giving us something good and healthy as opposed to something warped and unhelpful? To my mind, the answer to this question is the answer to yours. My answer is that we apply our noetic capacity—with cognitive, emotional and conative dimensions—to the evidence and draw conclusions about what is true and what is not. The result is neither perfect nor necessarily right ... but it is what we have.
Kent Sparks - #19907

July 2^nd 2010

Hi Martin,

Something akin to penal substitution is hinted at in certain texts, but this is more of a Pauline metaphor, created by combining ancient legal language with Jewish sacrificial concepts. There is of course some value in it, but it is a partial theological portrait that needs to be shaped by other metaphors, such as Christ’s victory over the power of sin and death and the biblical teaching that murder is sin. After all, if “God is not pleased with the death of the wicked,” he certainly can’t be pleased with the death of his own innocent son.

We are trying to figure out theology ... while the biblical authors are valuable and authoritative guides in this effort, they were also trying to figure it out ... none of them had anything like a complete or perfect understanding of things divine and human.
Mairnéalach - #19926

July 2^nd 2010

to Kenton:

Why insist Christus Victor “corrects” Paul? Even more puzzling—why attribute Christus Victor to an “older, more venerable” tradition, when Paul PREDATES that? I have no beef with using Christus Victor to help flesh out penal atonement—but it’s incoherent to use it to overthrow penal atonement.

Please spend time to reflect prayerfully upon the connection I have made between the injustice of God giving up his son to evil men, and the injustice of “genocide”. You and me worship a God who made himself an abomination, so to speak—“he who justifies the wicked is an abomination”. Well, God justified the wicked (folks like Kenton, and Mairnéalach), and that act was completely unjust.

Our modern sense of justice is completely incapable of judging God’s acts in history. All that we can do is thank God that it’s clear—we have no mandate to slaughter unbelievers. Things changed, and the change was a clarion change in Christ. If people misused the scriptures to persecute one another, it is not because the scriptures strayed—it is because they ignored the fulfillment of Christ. Oddly, using modern ethical sensibilities to judge scripture’s worthiness is more akin to cultural imperialism than thoughtful ethics.
Mairnéalach - #19927

July 2^nd 2010

to Kimberly:

I think Paul’s words are most helpful in answering this question—more like, beholding this MYSTERY! Did God create evil? Is he responsible?

———————-

As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy.

***For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.***

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

————

He consigned us all to disobedience! It IS his fault! We lay this charge at his feet! God made all this happen! On purpose! But—he subjected HIMSELF to it! He did not stay above it!
Kent Sparks - #19986

July 2^nd 2010

Dear Mairnéalach:

You and I are on different methodological and theological pages. The idea of biblical inerrancy, and the concomitant idea that all of Paul’s metaphors must control our theology, is not something I entertain. I am not any kind of foundationalist who believes that we need or can have fool-proof, incorrigible knowledge as human beings. We only have our judgments, which are always metaphors that get at reality better or worse, fruitfully or unfruitfully.

Were I to understand the “true” Christian God as you do ... as one who actually bears the fault of our evil ... then I’d simply not be a Christian ... for it would mean that God is something evil and terrible ... a better portrait of God would be available through natural theology or perhaps through some other religious lens.

I have no interest in preserving Christianity ... I believe because, as I understand it, it makes sense of human experience. But if it turns out that Christianity fails to do that, I’ll simply turn elsewhere.
Kent Sparks - #19988

July 2^nd 2010

Dear Mairnéalach:

One more thing about your comment, “He consigned us all to disobedience! It IS his fault! We lay this charge at his feet! God made all this happen! On purpose! But—he subjected HIMSELF to it! He did not stay above it!”

I think that here you are badly misreading Paul. Paul does say that God has in some sense consigned us to disobedience, but his argument is this was done passively, in that we put ourselves in that position by disobeying God’s law. So it was an indirect act of God, rather than a direct act, that resulting in our situation. Your reading of Paul crosses a line that the author of Job tried to draw, which insulates God from charges that he is at fault.

If Paul were to read your comments, I think he’d be greatly troubled by them. His agenda in Romans is to demonstrate that God and his law are good and that any fault lies with us. Your reading reflect precisely the charge that Paul’s opponents were making, namely, that if the law consigns us to sin, God and the law are culpable ... Paul’s answer: “By no means!”
Kent Sparks - #19995

July 2^nd 2010

Dear All,

I was on vacation for a few weeks and missed some of the blogging discussion. After looking back over it, I want to reiterate something that seems to be lost in the discussion.

What I’ve written is really for Christians who already suspect that inerrancy, as conceived by most Evangelicals, is far off the mark. I already know that inerrantists will be troubled by what I’ve written and further know that, when it comes to debates about inerrancy, they are endless.

For those who wish to hold tight to inerrancy, I’d offer this one appeal: There are MANY apparent errors and contradictions in Scripture. Even if in reality we can create all sorts of philosophical and historical scenarios to avoid these errors, I don’t think that its a good idea to demand that good theology embrace the solutions or the result. I do not regard the loss of inerrancy as some sort of tragedy. For in my own case, I would never be a Christian if it entailed believing in inerrancy.
Mairnéalach - #20012

July 2^nd 2010

Kent:

Actually, I have not studied inerrancy enough to give a firm philosophical commitment to it one way or another. I don’t know what the Chicago statement demands. As far as I know, I might be judged lacking on that.

I am happy to agree that all human knowledge is finite. I think this makes me innocent of saying that we need “fool-proof, incorrigible knowledge”. I am happy to say that Jesus learned science just like a man of his day, and Peter and Paul lacked much science in many things.

However, when it comes to judicial metaphors in the bible (OT and NT), Paul is just the tip (albeit the pointy tip) of the iceberg! Surely as a bible scholar you realize this. Why then would you feel compelled to “correct” these metaphors with “more venerable” ones? Why not synthesize them?

...more
Mairnéalach - #20017

July 2^nd 2010

...continued

Paul and Barnabas at Antioch said “And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance.” Now, Kenton, we both know that this sermon did not result in the conversion of a bunch of people thirsty for Gentile blood. Quite the opposite. The church that grew from these sermons had a staunch realization that its time was different than the generation of Joshua, and that Christ had subdued all enemies under his feet for all time, and that the boundaries of Israel had spread to the whole earth.

While I concede that many modern Christians are lacking in this understanding (i.e. the boundaries of Israel), I submit to you that this exact same preaching is today resulting in the exact same things as at Pisidian Antioch. People are still coming to Christ, and they’re still not bloodthirsty. They are spiritually capable of hearing that God the Father, who is One with the Son, actually said and commanded all of those things in Joshua’s generation. The commands were not hallucinations.

On to the “creation of philosophical scenarios” to avoid errors…

...more
Kent Sparks - #20019

July 2^nd 2010

Hi Mairnéalach:

I agree with you ... what we have should be synthesized into a greater whole. Of course there will be debate about what the best synthesis is, but that just goes with the territory.

My point about Christus Victor is that early Christians did not understand Paul to be advancing anything quite like penal substitution. Penal substitution developed much later and suggests that, in fact, Paul himself never held such a view. Rather, later Christians seized on an element of his metaphor and reified it to create something Paul himself would never have advocated.

In essence, I’m saying that early Christians provide a better clue for how we should synthesize the biblical data than do Christians living after Anselm.

I am not interested in any theology that makes God out to be the murderer of his himself ... Rather, I wish to embrace a theology in which God redeems us at precisely the point where we sin ... when we murder God and Christ arises victoriously to defeat the power of sin and death.
Mairnéalach - #20020

July 2^nd 2010

...continued

Regarding the “creation of philosophical and historical scenarios” to avoid errors: Kenton, you are right to say that some of the things said by Christians in order to make scripture “coherent” are real groaners. I’ve heard plenty myself. This is a continual habit and has been a habit since the earliest days. We didn’t even need modernity to induce this problem. You probably know of the eye-rolling ways that some Fathers tried to reconcile “in the day you eat of the fruit” with Adam’s recorded lifespan and Peter’s “one year is as a thousand days”. And there were many others.

Yet, what you are doing is the same thing! Your own theories form a system of knowledge that is an attempt to reconcile modern ethics with ancient ethics using an “incarnational” model of scripture.

This is not a problem! As you have hinted, all human knowledge is conditioned by the quest to reconcile things which seem at odds. All I ask is that when you do this yourself, you acknowledge it, and don’t begrudge it in others, even if they’re working on different reconciliations.

...more
Kent Sparks - #20022

July 2^nd 2010

“Now, Kenton, we both know that this sermon did not result in the conversion of a bunch of people thirsty for Gentile blood. Quite the opposite.”

I’d say you’re partly right. Early Christians were quite willing to acknowledge theological changes between the testaments, so that “eye for an eye” could be set aside and replaced with “love your enemies.” But anyone familiar with Church history will know what happened as soon as the Christians got power. We killed, maimed, and slaughtered the pagans, went to war for God, and then tried to take over the entire world in an oppressive, “biblically based” enslavement of natives everywhere. Oh how often the settlers in North America used Deuteronomy to defend their seizures of land and killing of innocent people, created in God’s image.

I see the dangers as much greater, and feel that it is very important that we reject as whole any portrait of God that has him actually commanding Israel to slaughter Canaanites and take their lands.

My concerns are not modern ... if you wish, read my article in CBQ, “Gospel as Conquest,” which shows how the author of Matthew responded to biblical genocide.
Mairnéalach - #20028

July 2^nd 2010

...continued

Kenton, as you know, the bible speaks at many points of God pouring out wrath on people. This was all done on account of sin. The Father did it to the pagan nations, and he did it to hardened Israel, in turns. (This historical fact by itself disproves that the herem accounts are an example of primitive ethnocentrism; all the texts make it clear that the Israelites viewed themselves as no less wicked than their conquered neighbors. Sometimes it took a firm spanking to get it through their heads, but the lesson seems to have taken more than once, and that humility was even recorded in the errant texts).

So, along comes God the Father one day, and decides to pour out his wrath on his own Son. So to speak. Sure, you may object to the loads of passages that describe this very thing. You may claim that folks in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd centuries had epiphanies which got them past that barbaric nonsense. You may claim that the authors were just using grasping metaphors to get at something much better, that they could just never articulate very well.

That’s fine, as far as it goes, but it begs a few questions…
Mairnéalach - #20031

July 2^nd 2010

...continued

If there are penal, substitionary metaphors littered all throughout the Mosaic literature, the dynastic literature, the exilic literature, and the writings of the church age, doesn’t that strongly mitigate against the view that they suddenly become invalid in 300AD? After all, the writing conventions of 1,500 B.C. were startlingly different than those of 60 A.D. Yet those poor old authors still hack along using those metaphors, vainly trying to grasp at the meat of things.

Furthermore, I think both me and you agree that Satan is a worker of evil. Yet, will your view yield to the fact that God the Father uses Satan as a tool, molding all events for the good of those who love him? Joseph and his brothers understood this well before the herem age; one would think Joshua’s theology would be strongly informed by this, yet he went ahead and followed those bizarre hallucinations to kill seven tribes.

Make no mistake, it’s not Joshua’s character I feel the need to vindicate. It’s God the Father’s. I can happily agree that your knowledge, and mine, is finite, and praise God, I am not justified by my “neat” (hardly) theological systems. But I’m justified by BLOOD, and unjustly shed blood at that.
Mairnéalach - #20032

July 2^nd 2010

Kenton, thanks for interacting with all my comments. God bless you.
Norwegian Shooter - #20035

July 2^nd 2010

Kent, I appreciate your willingness to engage all questions here. Thank you.

“Amy wrote: ‘Can you explain specifically what you mean by it and how sin entering the world can warp and break everything in creation?’ No, I can’t explain that. But this is the traditional Christian understanding of why the cosmos seems to be a troubled place.”

As theology, that’s fine. You can take something you don’t understand and stop. Tradition is as good a reason for stopping as any other. Now contrast the scientific version of an answering, I don’t know:

“No, I can’t explain that. But I have a theory that I can test that might explain it, or at least it might raise new questions that will be further explored. I might be completely wrong about my theory, but I have confidence that the scientific endeavor of thousands of proposed answers, all transparently testable, will eventually produce knowledge to answer the question.”

BioLogos’ mission is to reconcile theology and science. Aren’t those two ways of answering “I don’t know” fundamentally irreconcilable?
Kent Sparks - #20039

July 2^nd 2010

Hi Norwegian Shooter:

When I say, “I can’t explain it,” I mean that I can’t explicate how and why it is the case that human sin warps the cosmos (although I could offer some conjectures). But an “I don’t know” answer is not appropriate for either a good reading of Genesis or of the science. The scientific evidence strongly supports evolution as an explanation for life’s origins, and the historical and literary evidence strongly supports the conclusion that Genesis has its science wrong.

Mystery ... “I don’t know” answers ... comes into play when there simply isn’t enough evidence to make a judgment.

It is of course possible for someone to say, “I don’t believe there’s enough evidence for evolution,” but I would judge that to be an errant conclusion.

We can’t escape the circle of reference and judgment, in which we decide whether and what question we can answer and decide how confident we are about those answers.

Does that make sense?
Kent Sparks - #20041

July 2^nd 2010

Hi Mairnéalach:

I do believe that a barbaric view of God appears in Scripture and that it reflects a broken human perspective that naturally arises when we see a troubled world. Things are bad, so God is causing it ... that is the logic.

But the idea the the cosmos is broken because of our doing, and that the consequences are “natural” so to speak, a fall of sorts, strikes me as more helpful and true. A child with cancer is not God’s vindictive act of violence against us ... it is evidence of a world that saddens God, and which in Christ he will put aright.

I am no pacifist. There are instances in which violence is necessary to protect the innocent ... but the idea that God would actually command his people to kill innocent people can’t be right ... Better to be a Unitarian than to believe such a thing.

Either Scripture is or is not in some respects a casualty of the fall ... and if it is, certainly the most obvious effect is the baptism of genocide as “God’s will.”
Rick - #20075

July 2^nd 2010

I just find it interesting that one very key element has not been mentioned much, if at all, in this series: The Holy Spirit. Both His role and inspirer and role in aiding the church (readers/interpreters) have been virtually absent in these posts (to this point).
Pete Enns - #20083

July 2^nd 2010

Rick,

How would that help?
Rick - #20097

July 2^nd 2010

Dr. Enns-

Dr. Sparks wrote:
“Scripture—given through and to a fallen world through fallen men—is both beautiful and broken. “

If that is correct, then the role of the Holy Spirit in inpiring “broken” Scripture needs to be considered.

As J.I. Packer wrote:

“The Sprit testified to the apostles by revealing to them all truth and inspiring them to communicate it with all truthfulness. Hence the gospel, and hence the New Testament. But the world would have neither without the Holy Spirit.”
Norwegian Shooter - #20100

July 2^nd 2010

Kent, it makes sense, but I must not have made sense myself, because it seems you think I am an anti-evolutionist. There are boatloads of evidence for evolution, derived from myriad scientific questions and answers leading to more questions and answers. My point was to show how inadequate theological answers are in comparison to scientific, even when the answer is “I don’t know”. Actually, especially when the answer is “I don’t know.” That is a license to stop and say “it’s a mystery” in theology, but a strong prod to seek the answer in science. “I don’t know” has such a fundamental different interpretation in theology and science, that I cannot see how anyone could value both interpretations.
Pete Enns - #20106

July 2^nd 2010

Rick,

How would considering the role of the H.S. help?
Kent Sparks - #20115

July 2^nd 2010

Hi Norwegian Shooter,

Got it. You are right that mystery is more likely the right stopping point in theology, where humans speak about an infinite God, than in science, where humans speak about a finite cosmos that is accessible study.

So, I think we agree.
Kent Sparks - #20117

July 2^nd 2010

“If that is correct, then the role of the Holy Spirit in inpiring “broken” Scripture needs to be considered.”

Rick,

This is precisely the point of my paper. The problems in Scripture no more impune the Spirit’s role in creating Scripture than the problems in the cosmos impune God’s role in creating the cosmos. All that is good in cosmos and Scripture is from God ... and whatever that is not good can be pinned on us.

The activity of the Holy Spirit in Christians, and more specifically in biblical authors, does not result in sinless, inerrant viewpoints ... in results in potentially better viewpoints.
Rick - #20154

July 2^nd 2010

Dr. Sparks (and Dr. Enns)-

I appreciate the efforts of you and Dr. Enns to counter the extreme “majic book” views out there. However, it appears you go too far in the other direction. It seems you lean heavily towards the human inability to reach towards God, and less on the ability of God to reach us.

If the Holy Spirit is the guide for Truth, then is not at least a mention needed, if not a fuller discussion of the theology of the Holy Spirit? Is He unable or unwilling to break through in a more helpful fashion?

“does not result in sinless, inerrant viewpoints ... in results in potentially better viewpoints.”
But does He help them communicate in “true viewpoints”, for what He is trying to communicate?

The I&I view of Dr. Enns seems more towards a balance between the Divine and man, than does your Divine and broken creation. Am I wrong there?

Finally, your views seem more applicable in describing a view of ecclesiology, rather than a view of the inspiration of Scripture. IMHO.
Kent Sparks - #20182

July 2^nd 2010

Hi Rick,

As I said, my work addresses those he see in Scripture plenty of evidence for ethical diversity, sometimes of a kind that juxtaposes contradictory views of brutality and profound love. If you don’t see this diversity yourself, then its not really necessary to engage the question ... you can simply say, it all fits together neatly, we only need to work out how it fits.

That option is not available to me. Whatever the HS does in inscripturation and illuminations, its clear IMO that it did not result in anything like an inerrant Bible, much less in a guarantee of good interpretation. So I must work with the Bible that we have ... beautiful but broken ... or admit, with all of the skeptics, that the broken world, and broken Bible, are strong evidence that God either doesn’t exist or doesn’t care.

I come to Christianity from the outside, so to speak, and have no interest in perpetuting a faith in Christ and Scripture if that entails believing all sorts of things that don’t suit the evidence or experience. If God really wanted a Bible free from error, I feel sure that he could’ve done a better job of it.
Norwegian Shooter - #20224

July 3^rd 2010

Kent, no we don’t. Boy, I learned the depth of a “worldview” on this one. I thought it obvious that stopping with a mystery is a complete cop-out. Scientifically, it is unthinkable (as I didn’t think it possible to misunderstand this point) to accept stopping when we don’t have an answer. Answering the unknown is the driving force in scientific discovery. The exact opposite, being content to say “it’s a mystery” is okay theologically. It is absolutely not okay to stop with “it’s a mystery”. For example, calling God infinite. What does that mean other than “we obviously can’t understand God, for He is beyond comprehension, so let’s agree that we will all talk in meaningless phrases such as ‘the ground of all Being’ and be happy.”?
Mairnéalach - #20252

July 3^rd 2010

Kenton:

I understand you do not regard the conquest of Joshua’s age as something that God the Son ever had in mind, but rather a freewheeling action that was equivalent in every way to modern men quoting bible verses to justify murder and theft. (correct me if this is an inaccurate summary of your thought).

Given that, I wonder how you view the reverse conquest of Israel by nations such as Babylon? Would you say that the pervading sense of guilt and deserved justice was not something that God the Son ever had in mind either, but was rather a sense of psychological projection, perhaps even based on a karmic sensibility; i.e. tribal memory or repressed guilt about participation in the ungodly conquests of Joshua’s time?
Kent Sparks - #20304

July 3^rd 2010

Hi Norwegian Shooter:

Question: Besides being loving and creative, what was God doing before he created our cosmos?

Kent
Kent Sparks - #20306

July 3^rd 2010

Hi Mairnéalach

“Would you say that the pervading sense of guilt and deserved justice was not something that God the Son ever had in mind either ... “

One clue that to my mind helps us understand this is the history of Israelite Religion, which only developed the notion of centralizing the cult in Jerusalem in the days or Hezekiah or, more likely, Josiah. The result was a history (from Deut to 2 Kings) that anachronistically “judged” Israel on the basis of a centralization requirement that no Israelites in history even knew about. So the biblical idea that the nations of Israel and Judah were disobeying Deuteronomy throughout history, and hence were judged for that disobedience, just isn’t right.

Closer to theological verities would be the prophetic tradition, which judges Israel and Judah for their moral lapses and covenant infidelities vis-a-vis Yahweh. The prophets thus announce that Yahweh is sending judgment and that terrible things will thus happen even to children, but they almost as quickly turn around and judge Assyria and Babylon for going too far. Really? How can one go “too far” if slaughtering kids is already acceptable? ...
Kent Sparks - #20308

July 3^rd 2010

What we see in the OT is the theological struggle created when human beings experience the tensions between standard social and religious thinking and new theological insights. In the end, the prophets were right to condemn Assyria and Babylon, and also right to condemn the injustices and ethical lapses in Israel and Judah ... but they were wrong if they understood God to be actively sending foreign nations to kill innocent children.

Christian ethics, formed as they are by revelation in Christ and by the Spirit’s mysterious leading, do not square with everything the Bible ethically endorses. That this is the case is easy to see, in my opinion, and is not a modern observation but something that the early Fathers struggled with all of the time.
Mairnéalach - #20316

July 3^rd 2010

Kenton:

You say

“The result was a history (from Deut to 2 Kings) that anachronistically “judged” Israel on the basis of a centralization requirement that no Israelites in history even knew about. So the biblical idea that the nations of Israel and Judah were disobeying Deuteronomy throughout history, and hence were judged for that disobedience, just isn’t right.”

Are you saying that from Deut to 2 Kings, Israel and Judah didn’t know about the law, or that their national mood of collective failure was an overreaction on their part, not really justified by their existing revelation?

Also,

“In the end, the prophets were right to condemn Assyria and Babylon, and also right to condemn the injustices and ethical lapses in Israel and Judah ... but they were wrong if they understood God to be actively sending foreign nations to kill innocent children.”

Would it be God’s sending of foreign nations to kill innocent children that is the chief objection, or would you include God’s proxy killing of their lapsed and unjust parents?

thanks for helping me understand what you’re saying. My own empirical ethics certainly balk at the death of children, also, and I am none too fond of contemplating an evil adult’s death either.
Kent Sparks - #20324

July 3^rd 2010

“Are you saying that from Deut to 2 Kings, Israel and Judah didn’t know about the law.”

To be clearer, I’m saying that Deut was written during the 8th or 7th centuries and that the history written on its basis, in Joshua to 2 Kings, anachronistically judges earlier Israel on that basis ... which in fact did not exist for Israelites prior to the centralization movement.

“Would it be God’s sending of foreign nations to kill innocent children that is the chief objection, or would you include God’s proxy killing of their lapsed and unjust parents?”

I use the illustration of children foremost because their innocence seems a secure assumption; as for adults, they too can be free of culpability and suffer nonetheless.

In the end, I’d surmise that all “evils” attributed to God directly are better understood indirectly, as the consequences of a world fallen because of human sin.

I should point out that I’m not wholly tied to particulars on these matters ... all that my article is saying is that the Biblical authors were fallen human beings who were, like us, in need of redemption. This necessarily changes the way that we should engage Scripture as God’s authoritative word.
Norwegian Shooter - #20382

July 3^rd 2010

Kent, God doesn’t exist, so it has been doing the exact same thing ever since time began, nothing.
Kent Sparks - #20465

July 4^th 2010

Hi Norwegian Shooter:

One must pick one’s poison ...

If one believes in a good God, then one must face the question of how he could allow so many things that seem terrible ...

If one doesn’t believe in God, then one must face the fact that the “evil” of the Nazi holocaust, not to mention the many evils of human suffering, are merely human constructs that have no real traction ...

Apparently I choose the former, and you the latter. I was once where you now are, so I have some sympathies with you and on a bad day agree with you. But in the end, I don’t think it works out nearly so well to get rid of God.
Norwegian Shooter - #20487

July 4^th 2010

Kent, “merely human constructs that have no real traction” What does that mean? And there is nothing to “work out” without God. Life goes on, without Him.
Kent Sparks - #20503

July 5^th 2010

Hi Norwegian Shooter:

The question is what understanding of the cosmos best suits human experience. Without God, then, humans experience of right and wrong, good and evil, justice and equity turn out to be merely evolutionary illusions that we can ignore whenever it suits us ... That might be how it really is, but I suspect instead that these human experiences point to something more ... to something beyond the cosmos that grounds what the evolutionary process as produced ... namely, belief in a God who says Hitler was wrong, even if all Germany thought he was right.

The concept of justice, which cannot ever really be served in real experience, points to something beyond us ...
MWPeak - #20519

July 5^th 2010

The author writes,

<q> The Bible, with its two Testaments, plays a vital role in God’s redemptive work. Taken as a whole, it is a steady and valuable guide for God’s people as they seek to know him and to love their neighbors. But ultimately, the redemption of both Testaments, and of the cosmos and humanity, is accomplished by the death, burial, resurrection, ascension and return of our savior, Jesus Christ. </q>

Given that scripture itself is in need of redemption, then it seems that drawing one’s faith from the flawed and errant accounts and teachings of Jesus is not entirely a stable and safe choice. At some point, when the current cannon is reemed, the redemption will inevitably have to look past the cannon itself, including the person of Jesus. The OT and NT will become a type of OT itself, fulfilled by yet another source of redemption from God.

I look forward to seeing the next stage of the evolution of human religion, a day when we see emerging a new religious text and traditions. Exciting stuff!
Roger A. Sawtelle - #20543

July 5^th 2010

I still maintain that inerrant means without error or mistake, and thus perfect. The Bible is not perfect because only God is perfect. The Bible says that Jesus was without sin, not that He never made a factual error or mistake.

The is Holy which means that it is specially set aside to do God’s work. In the Bible we are called to be holy (1 Peter 4:8,) but we are not called to be perfect, that is without error or mistake. Jesus does call us to be perfect just as God the Father is perfect, but He makes it clear that this being perfect means loving the just and the unjust just as the Father loves the just and unjust. Here love equals perfection, just as for Peter love equals holiness. Love does not mean without error, for as Peter also says love covers or overcomes a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8

The gist is that the Bible is holy because it carries out its divine purpose which is to reveal Jesus and God the Father to humans through the power of the Holy Spirit. It is not perfect because it is not God, nor does it have to be to fulfill its holy mission. Humans are holy when they are saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, but they are not inerrant, nor is the Bible.
Adam M. - #20585

July 5^th 2010

I don’t see how anyone can lay the blame at the feet of anyone but God. If God created the entire universe, knows everything, and is all-powerful, then surely, when God was deciding what kind of universe to create, God would have known in advance exactly how it would turn out. He could have chosen any kind of universe he wanted. And if God chose to create a universe in which Satan would betray him, humans would fall, and most would be damned, then how can humans be blamed?

You can’t blame humans for sinning if God chose to create a universe in which humans would sin. Why is this not obvious?
Adam M. - #20594

July 5^th 2010

And note that free will doesn’t solve this problem. Whatever actions humans take, God would have known them in advance when he chose which kind of universe to create. By creating a different universe, he could have induced people to make different choices by altering their circumstances or personalities, without removing anybody’s free will. (For instance, if Hitler’s father was delayed from copulating by a few minutes, a different sperm and egg would have joined, and a different person would have been born. )

If he didn’t want Satan to rebel and tempt mankind into sin, he could have created Satan with a less selfish temperament. God’s choice to create Satan with a temperament that would lead him to rebel and instigate the fall of man means the fall of man was predestined, chosen by God, and hence God’s fault, free will or no…

Finally, the idea that evil is a necessary consequence of free will is also ridiculous. Consider Heaven. Will people in Heaven have free will? Will Heaven contain evil? If free will without evil is possible in Heaven, then you can’t say evil is a necessary consequence of free will.
dave - #20595

July 5^th 2010

Your metaphor only works if Renoir also painted the vandals who wrecked his painting.
Dunemeister - #20606

July 5^th 2010

@Adam:

Who says that God can create just any old universe he likes? How does omnipotence and omniscience entail this? When’s the last time you tried to conceive, let alone accomplish, the creation of a world that (a) ran according to laws, and (b) contained creatures with free will? And how would you (or anyone else) know that it “must be possible” for God—as powerful and knowledgeable as you like—to create a world that satisfied both (a) and (b)?
dave - #20642

July 6^th 2010

“Who says that God can create just any old universe he likes? How does omnipotence and omniscience entail this?”

It’s the definition of the word “omnipotent”. If God really is omnipotent, then he can do anything at all. That’s what the word means. If God is limited in what he can create, then he’s not omnipotent.
Kent Sparks - #20645

July 6^th 2010

“You can’t blame humans for sinning if God chose to create a universe in which humans would sin. Why is this not obvious?”

The bottom line for me and many others is that we live in a world that we interpret as both beautiful and terrible. This was true of me both with and without faith and is a view that I can’t imagine changing ... sunsets are beautiful ... a child suffering with cancer is horrible.

I find before me two primary options:

a. No good God exists, so things “terrible” and “beautiful” are merely interpretive creations ... I could as easily be happy about a suffering child if I decide I don’t like their parents or people.

b. Goodness reflects what ought to be and the terror what ought not to be .. in which case, something beyond mere existence grounds these categories ... namely, a good God against whom something in the cosmos stands in opposition.

Neither answer resolves all our questions ... but I prefer b. And on top of that, I accept the Christian idea that God is working to put the world aright by participating in the very cause and consequence itself ... by suffering himself by the hand of evil human beings.

I doubt that some new level of “ideological evolution” will improve on that.
Kent Sparks - #20647

July 6^th 2010

HI Roger A. Sawtelle

I agree with you 100%. Nicely put.
dave - #20662

July 6^th 2010

You realize “b” conflicts with Christian beliefs, right? According to Christianity, God created the something in the cosmos that stands in opposition. What you’re espousing sounds more like Mazdaism.
Tulse - #20703

July 6^th 2010

Kent, when you say “the cosmos is broken because of our doing”, do you literally mean “the cosmos”? I thought that BioLogos strives to reconcile religion and science, and it is simply inconceivable to me that creatures on an infinitesimally small rock adrift in the trillions of cubic light-years of the universe could “break” it. It seems the height of hubris to claim that humans have such power, and I’m sure such claim would irritate any other intelligent beings in this cosmos. I can understand (not believe, but understand) claiming that human actions impaired our personal relationship with some supernatural being, but the idea that we fundamentally changed the structure of the universe through our actions seems, well, silly in any scientifically-informed context.
Norwegian Shooter - #20704

July 6^th 2010

“The concept of justice, which cannot ever really be served in real experience, points to something beyond us ...”

If you’re in Plato’s cave, sure. But in the real world, idealized concepts don’t point to anything outside the minds that contemplate them. And how do you account for the different concepts of justice existing across time and space? Do they all point to different things beyond us? What happens when a particular society’s concept of justice changes? For instance, the obvious example is slavery. Did the something that is pointed to change when a particular society started thinking slavery was unjust? Does the something beyond us change continuously or discreetly when some threshold is passed?

PS, thanks for again proving Godwin’s Law!
G. Tingey - #20772

July 7^th 2010

“God’s” creation”?
What’s that then?
The biological diversity we see, derived from evolution through natural selection?
Where’s the “creation” in that then, given that it an entirely naturalistic phenomenon, with no mystical input?

Come to that, for this dicussion to be meaningful you must firs demonstrate that a “god” exists, and is detectable.

Please show.
Or go away…....
Kent Sparks - #20793

July 7^th 2010

Hi Norwegian Shooter - #20704

“But in the real world, idealized concepts don’t point to anything outside the minds that contemplate them ...”

How do you know that idealized concepts don’t point to anything outside of the mind?
Kent Sparks - #20795

July 7^th 2010

Hi Tulse - #20703

“Kent, when you say “the cosmos is broken because of our doing”, do you literally mean “the cosmos?”

This is standard Christian Orthodoxy. Christians traditionally believe that our negative experience of pain and suffering point to a cosmos that is not entirely whole but in some way broken and in need of redemption. Traditionally this is expressed in terms of “beautiful” AND “broken,” in the sense that the cosmos reflects wonder and beauty as well as terror and evil. The tradition does not and probably cannot really say where the “fault line” is between the beautiful and broken because it is the beautiful thing itself that has been damaged.

There is an emerging tradition that tries to hold that the cosmos itself is properly ordered and that it’s only humanity that’s suffered damage from the fall. While I don’t subscribe to that view for lots of reasons, that alternative view would not substantively affect my theological approach to Scripture and science.
Kent Sparks - #20796

July 7^th 2010

Dear G. Tingey - #20772:

“Come to that, for this dicussion to be meaningful you must firs demonstrate that a “god” exists, and is detectable ... Please show ... Or go away…....

Tingey, I can honestly say that I love you and care about you. Can you say the same of me?
Tulse - #20803

July 7^th 2010

Kent, you wrote:

“This is standard Christian Orthodoxy. Christians traditionally believe that our negative experience of pain and suffering point to a cosmos that is not entirely whole but in some way broken and in need of redemption.”

I am well aware that is standard Christian Orthodoxy, having been raised a Christian. My question, which you didn’t actually address, is how this is reconciled with science, which is the avowed mission of BioLogos. For example, as I suggested above, there may well be other intelligent beings in the vastness of the universe—do they suffer because humans somehow broke the cosmos? This is not intended to be a glib question, and I think needs a serious answer if this issue is to be resolved with a rapprochement between science and religion.
Norwegian Shooter - #20812

July 7^th 2010

Kent, I don’t, but it’s the null hypothesis. You have to provide evidence that they do. Have any?

Also, you are increasingly answering my questions with questions.
Kent Sparks - #20813

July 7^th 2010

Hi Norwegian Shooter - #20812

“you are increasingly answering my questions with questions.”

Yes. That’s because the questions and the answers for them (or lack thereof) are themselves evidence for the debate about God’s existence. .

So again I ask: How do you know that idealized concepts don’t point to anything outside of the mind? Either you don’t really know that they are merely idealized (in which case we must ask what hypothesis best explains the human experience of “getting things right”), or you do know and can explain to me how you know?
Kent Sparks - #20817

July 7^th 2010

Hi Tulse (@20803)

“My question, which you didn’t actually address, is how this is reconciled with science ... “

My point was that regardless of how one parses “fallenness,” whether as a universal effect or as a merely human effect, this will not much change the thesis that I’ve presented above.

But to delve into the question a bit further, I would say that a discussion like this quickly comes to an impasse beyond which we can’t really go. For instance, would you say that the suffering of animals ... the proverbial tooth and claw ... is evidence of a cosmos gone awry or of a beautiful, cosmological system? If we take the former approach, we must deal with the fact that its hard to understand, scientifically speaking, how the cosmos could be different from what it is. If we accept the second option, then we fairly quickly end up saying that there’s nothing “wrong” when innocent children suffer because of genetic disorders and diseases.

In other words, in the end it comes down to one’s judgment, and I don’t think that any amount of “evidence” will finally confirm which judgment is right.
Kent Sparks - #20823

July 7^th 2010

Hi Norwegian Shooter - #20812

BTW, there IS evidence that our concepts about human experience, like love and justice, are getting the world right. The evidence is this: we experience that these concepts are getting the world right, and that other qualities and behaviors ... like hatred and genocide .. are getting the world wrong. This IS the evidence, as is your own nature desire to push me and others to get things “right.”
Tulse - #20833

July 7^th 2010

Kent wrote:

“I would say that a discussion like this quickly comes to an impasse beyond which we can’t really go. For instance, would you say that the suffering of animals ... the proverbial tooth and claw ... is evidence of a cosmos gone awry or of a beautiful, cosmological system?”

Now I’m very confused. BioLogos clearly supports an “old Earth” view, with some form of theistic evolution. Presumably, then, the “fallenness” of the cosmos could not have arisen until AFTER humans appeared. Are you saying that animals did not suffer prior to the evolution of humans? Are you suggesting that any intelligent species in the cosmos older than humans suddenly found themselves experiencing sickness and death because recently evolved humans sinned in some other part of the universe?

I am genuinely trying to understand your position, and reconcile it, as per the BioLogos mission, with science. But I just don’t see how to do that.
Kent Sparks - #20835

July 7^th 2010

“Presumably, then, the “fallenness” of the cosmos could not have arisen until AFTER humans appeared.”

I wouldn’t assume that. IF one concludes that the universe really is in some way twisted on account of suffering and evil, AND IF one pins the blame on human culpability, then it would follow that human sin had a kind of proleptic effect on creation itself (similar to the “effect” of Christ’s redeeming death for those who lived before he lived). This would of course imply that the idea of a perfect creation where we ate only vegatables,in Genesis, is a projection of what should be but never historically was.

But again, this is predicated on the judgment that human and even animal suffering are bad things ... If these aren’t bad things, then one would head in a different direction.

Does this make sense?
Tulse - #20838

July 7^th 2010

Kent writes:

“human sin had a kind of proleptic effect on creation itself”

So the cosmos was broken at the start because humans would screw up LATER? How is that possibly consistent with the notion of free will, that the fall arose because of human choice? Indeed, doesn’t it imply that humans have ALWAYS lived in a fallen world, since it would have been fallen prior to humanity? I just don’t follow the logic of this.

And other intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe were condemned to a fallen universe even though they did nothing to deserve it?

“this is predicated on the judgment that human and even animal suffering are bad things”

One can believe such things are undesirable and unfortunate without believing the cosmos is “broken” in some way.

“Does this make sense?”

I’m sure that, as apologetics, it works just fine. But as a way of reconciling religious belief with our scientific understanding of the universe, which is the BioLogos mission, it honestly sounds like word salad to me.

I think you are correct as you suggested above, that we are at an impasse. I do appreciate you wrestling with these issues with me, even if the final outcome is perhaps less than satisfactory to both of us.
Kent Sparks - #20840

July 7^th 2010

Hi Tulse

“One can believe such things are undesirable and unfortunate without believing the cosmos is “broken” in some way.”

As you might guess, that sounds a bit like “word salad” to me

How can one describe something as “unfortunate” and “undesirable” if that’s just the way God made the world to work? Wouldn’t we more suitably say, its really beautiful ... we just errantly think its bad when kids get cancer and when Nazi’s torture animals and humans in their “research”?

I think that the scientific evidence suggests that we live in a world that is qualitatively as it has always been, and religious evidence that suggests the world is not as it should be. For me, any solutions need to account for these two “facts.”
dave - #20841

July 7^th 2010

Kent, it’s a shame God couldn’t tell Martin Luther and other Christian theologians that it was wrong to write the anti-Semitic screeds that influenced Hitler’s beliefs.
Kent Sparks - #20842

July 7^th 2010

“And other intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe were condemned to a fallen universe even though they did nothing to deserve it?”

Given the nature of the evolutionary process, I would not be surprised to learn that there are other sentient beings in the cosmos. But if there are, I suspect that there story will be akin to ours and that we will share culpability for the situation.

There is A LOT that we don’t know ... and I suspect that if we really had even an inkling of the facts, we’d be utterly flabbergasted and shocked by the complexity.
Kent Sparks - #20843

July 7^th 2010

Hi Dave (@20841)

“Kent, it’s a shame God couldn’t tell Martin Luther and other Christian theologians that it was wrong to write the anti-Semitic creeds that influenced Hitler’s beliefs.”

Yes, Luther was sometimes (always?) a nasty fellow ... The first time that I read his diatribe against the Jews, I couldn’t believe it. But then again, he mainly got it from Deuteronomy ... which is the problem I am trying to deal with in my paper.”

Of course, I would argue that in Luther’s case God DID tell him to love his enemies, but he either couldn’t or wouldn’t listen. I’ll let God handle that one.
Kent Sparks - #20844

July 7^th 2010

Hi G. Tingey - #20772

“The biological diversity we see, derived from evolution through natural selection? Where’s the “creation” in that then, given that it an entirely naturalistic phenomenon.”

Nature IS from God, so there’s no such thing as a merely naturalistic explanation for life’s origins. The question is, How did create life? Genesis describes it as earth plus God’s breath ... the science suggests a long and convoluted biological process that was started by God’s hand. Either way, we’re talking about creation.
Tulse - #20847

July 7^th 2010

Kent writes:

“Given the nature of the evolutionary process, I would not be surprised to learn that there are other sentient beings in the cosmos. But if there are, I suspect that there story will be akin to ours and that we will share culpability for the situation.”

So Original Sin may not be unique to humans? Really? What about salvation? Would other intelligent species have their own versions of Jesus?
Kent Sparks - #20852

July 7^th 2010

“Would other intelligent species have their own versions of Jesus?”

I did not bring up the hypothetical case and it doesn’t muc interest me. We must first ask whether there’s anything wrong with the cosmos as it stands, and i don’t think this question hinges on the existence of ET.

One difficulty that we have in this conversation is that there are so many varied assumptions in play, and so many visceral gut reactions from so many angles. It would probably help to focus on whether the cosmos is “fallen” and, if so, in what way and why?
Tulse - #20853

July 7^th 2010

Kent writes:

“We must first ask whether there’s anything wrong with the cosmos as it stands, and i don’t think this question hinges on the existence of ET.”

Quite the contrary—as someone interested in science, I think it is quite relevant to whether a “fallen cosmos” is a coherent scientific notion.

“It would probably help to focus on whether the cosmos is “fallen””

What I’m doing is trying to determine this by seeing if the notion makes any sense in light of what we know about the universe (including the likely existence of other intelligent species somewhere in the vastness of space). To this point, I don’t understand how the idea of a “fall” caused by human action is reconcilable with the issues I have raised.

If you don’t feel that such reconciliation is important or necessary, that’s fine, although my impression was that such reconciliation is the raison d’etre of BioLogos.
Kent Sparks - #20859

July 7^th 2010

HI Tulse - #20853:

Science cannot answer the ethical question of whether the universe is as it should be ... it can tell us what is but not necessarily what should be.

Again, I take it that a child suffering from genetic disorders or cancer is a truly terrible thing that reveals a fallen or disordered cosmos. What say you?
Tulse - #20864

July 7^th 2010

Kent writes:

“Science cannot answer the ethical question of whether the universe is as it should be”

I suppose this is one of the big divides between us, Kent, since I don’t think the universe has a moral obligation to “be” in any particular way. The universe just “is”.

“I take it that a child suffering from genetic disorders or cancer is a truly terrible thing”

Absolutely.

“that reveals a fallen or disordered cosmos.”

Nope, no more so than black holes and volcanos and bad shoes do. At issue here seems to be the belief that because the universe isn’t exactly the way we humans want it, that means that we must be being punished for something. That seems absurd to me, the height of both hubris and masochism (and, of course, raises the very sticky issue of theodicy). More germane to our discussion, this view is also completely incompatible with our scientific knowledge of how the universe works.

Again, I think we’ve reached a conceptual impasse here. The arguments you offer are, I’m sure, effective as apologetics for those who believe, but simply aren’t convincing to this no-longer-believer.
Joel Wheeler - #20866

July 7^th 2010

Too much scripture, not enough science.
Jonathan Houser - #20873

July 7^th 2010

Interesting read, but I never found the “warped world” view of our planet to be particularly sensible.

The christian view is that death, disease, pain, famine, fear ect are the result of human sin. But what did the world look like before man existed? If you have even an inkling of trust for modern science, and believe that we know what the natural world looked like before man was on earth, then we see that the world before mankind was a world of death, disease, pain, famine, all living things living in fear of one another and the harsh always changing planet that they lived on, desperately trying to eek out an existence for one more day. The exact same as we see today, minus a beast intelligent enough to recognize and express the condition of life poetically.

“God” created a natural order violent and painful, and fraught with fear and disease on a ever changing and brutal planet. All “sin” seemed to have done is give us more interesting literature on the subject.
Tulse - #20880

July 7^th 2010

Jonathan, I think you missed where Kent said that:

“human sin had a kind of proleptic effect on creation itself (similar to the “effect” of Christ’s redeeming death for those who lived before he lived)”

or, as far as I understand the term, that human sin retroactively mucked up the cosmos.

No, I don’t understand it either.
Kent Sparks - #20881

July 7^th 2010

Joel Wheeler - #20866

“Too much scripture, not enough science.”

That’s VERY funny ... Evangelicals almost always say the opposite in response to my work.

Tulse - #20864

“Again, I think we’ve reached a conceptual impasse here. The arguments you offer are, I’m sure, effective as apologetics for those who believe, but simply aren’t convincing to this no-longer-believer.”

Although, in my own case, my return to faith after a bout was based on these very observations ... that the experience of evil and moral order point to something beyond the cosmos that grounds that experience. I don’t find your arguments any more convincing than you do mine. But I do very much understand where you’re coming from, given that I was once at the same point myself.
Jonathan Houser - #20984

July 8^th 2010

@tulse

That makes even less sense, I certainly don’t understand it if he thinks it was retro-active. That would mean that god created a messed up universe that he didn’t want to create because he knew that two people that he was going to create billions of years later weren’t going to love him enough….and this guy is the most powerful and wise entity in existence….

Why don’t we just try to justify Lord Of The Rings as being literal and factually true? It would probably take less mental gymnastics to reconcile that to reality than it does the bible.
Norwegian Shooter - #20991

July 8^th 2010

Thanks again for sticking with the comments, Kent.

“evidence for the debate about God’s existence” They’re plenty of evidence for this debate, but what does the existence of a debate prove? Certainly not that both sides could be right. (Think flat earth “debate”) What’s the evidence for God’s existence?

As for thoughts pointing to something else, I answered that I don’t know. But “thoughts are just thoughts” is the default position. You have to provide evidence that they do point to something. And then you can move on to how.

Okay, I read your second response, you’re arguing that the “moral order” of the world is the “something” that thoughts point to, that Natural Law exists. Right? Well, you can’t produce any empirical evidence for these contentions, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Norwegian Shooter - #20996

July 8^th 2010

Kent, I agree with Tulse that, like most smart theologians, you toss lots of word salad in debates that are supposed to be scientific. Like this:

“For instance, would you say that the suffering of animals ... the proverbial tooth and claw ... is evidence of a cosmos gone awry or of a beautiful, cosmological system?” It’s neither, of course. Classic false dichotomy. The cosmos is neutral, unfeeling, oblivious, impersonal and entirely resistant to attempts to anthropomorphize it.

Tulse says: “One can believe such things are undesirable and unfortunate without believing the cosmos is “broken” in some way.” This is crystal clear to me. Humans, through their rational faculties, can call many things undesirable and unfortunate without shifting the blame to the cosmos. That is, humans create morality. You have to step outside your “that’s just the way God made the world to work” paradigm. That’s about an un-scientific statement as can be made.
Norwegian Shooter - #21002

July 8^th 2010

“I think that the scientific evidence suggests that we live in a world that is qualitatively as it has always been, and religious evidence that suggests the world is not as it should be. For me, any solutions need to account for these two “facts.””

That you put the word “fact” in scare quotes is telling. I think it is a subtle admission that the two evidences are not in communication with each other, and thus a lot of word play will be necessary to even get them on the same page, to say nothing of in harmony with each other.

On just the religious evidence, is Natural Law really your only example? And in general, what’s your take on the Is-Ought problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem
Norwegian Shooter - #21006

July 8^th 2010

Jonathon, brilliant!

“God” created a natural order violent and painful, and fraught with fear and disease on a ever changing and brutal planet. All “sin” seemed to have done is give us more interesting literature on the subject.
John Schoettler - #21069

July 9^th 2010

We need to move past using the antiquated term ‘postmodern’. Post modernism has already come and gone and yet people are still acting as if it’s still 1990.

Better explanations of our current era can be found @

The Death of Postmodernism @ http://www.philosophynow.org/issue58/58kirby.htm

The rise of ‘Altermodernism’ @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqHMILrKpDY
Jon - #21518

July 12^th 2010

Jonathan Houser, tulse, Norwegian Shooter

OMG please find a philosophy of religion blog. You’re debating something outside the realm of biblical scholarship, geez. here’s one (I even searched “evil” for you):

http://movabletype.ektopos.com/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?search=evil&IncludeBlogs=3&limit=20
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After Inerrancy: Evangelicals and the Bible in a Postmodern Age, Part 5

A Key Analogy: The Problem of Creation and the Problem of Scripture

The Redemption of Scripture: Biblical Examples

Notes

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