Response from One of Jerry Coyne’s Fleas
February 17, 2010
Related topics: New Atheism |
"Science and the Sacred" frequently features essays from The BioLogos Foundation's leaders and Senior Fellows. Please note the views expressed here are those of the author, not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. For more on what BioLogos believes, click here.
Today's entry was written by
Pete Enns.
Pete Enns is Senior Fellow of Biblical Studies for The BioLogos Foundation and author of several books and commentaries, including the popular Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, which looks at three questions raised by biblical scholars that seem to threaten traditional views of Scripture.
Today's entry was co-authored by Darrel Falk.
Darrel Falk serves as president of The BioLogos Foundation. He transitioned into Christian higher education 25 years ago and has given numerous talks about the relationship between science and faith at many universities and seminaries. He is the author of Coming to Peace with Science.
In discussing Kent Spark’s recent post, the noted atheist and evolutionary biologist, Jerry Coyne has referred to BioLogos as a flea that needs to be scratched. Coyne writes that by showing that Augustine and Calvin did not view Scripture as a sourcebook for information about nature, Sparks was setting up some straw men that do not represent Christianity as a whole.
Except for a few dissenters like Augustine and Calvin, the bulk of Christian theology up to the rise of science in the sixteenth century involved seeing the Bible literally—in its entirety.
It is true that throughout history many Christians have looked to the Bible as a source of knowledge about the natural world—not just the supernatural. However many of the historical leaders in Christianity—those who defined the faith best through the centuries—have long called for something richer than simple face value.
Although many Christians are not aware of it, (and clearly this includes certain non-Christians, like Coyne himself) the Christian and Jewish traditions, going back to around the time of Christ and earlier, understood that a literal reading of Genesis either undersells or even misunderstands its theology. One need only mention figures like the Jewish interpreter Philo or Origen and other early Church Fathers and the point becomes self-evident. Despite our desire to find easy answers to our questions, many leading past thinkers have long known there is a much deeper message in Scripture.
Coyne, himself a fundamentalist of sorts, does not seem to appreciate the theological flexibility of Christianity (and Judaism) as seen in its own Scripture. The entire New Testament is, if anything, one large hermeneutical rethinking of the meaning of the Old Testament in light of the Christ event. To say the least, the first Christians were hardly constricted to a literal reading of the Old Testament. New circumstances called for new articulations. The same phenomenon is seen within the Hebrew Bible, where the writer of Chronicles does nothing less than recast Israel's entire history in light of the author's experience of exile and return from Babylon.
The message of Scripture reflects the cultures in which it is written, yet we also believe it transcends those cultures. There is a delicate balance but our best thinkers have always understood this. At BioLogos we, and the many others like us, are simply responding to new knowledge in the way that the Judeo-Christian tradition has long been known to do.
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February 20th 2010
As an Atheist, I see one of the core issues of this discussion as the simple fight over terms.
In this case, all sides are trying to take the word “Christian” or “Christianity” and give it their definition. They are trying to homogenize the term. Oddly, each side points to the variety of Christians theologies and perspectives but always go back to using the term too broadly.
For instance:
Point: there is no “Christianity as a whole”
Point: as if “the bulk” matters—you see , each side is trying to blur out the particulars. In this sense, the word, “Christianity” should be avoided or at least always couched carefully to be clear of the use. Each side is using the term normatively.
Reply to this commentFebruary 23rd 2010
To somewhat randomly pick up on your reference to the strange (to us) hermeneutic of the author of 1 and 2 Chronicles, I have been very persuaded of the approach you mention here in terms of the relationship to the presentation of 1 and 2 Kings. Are there any particularly good and helpful resources/essays/books you would recommend for one to dig into how 1 and 2 Chronicles fits into the overall canon of Scripture and how we should read it in comparison to 1 and 2 Kings? Thanks!
Reply to this commentFebruary 24th 2010
Nick, here is the problem. The kinds of issues we are discussing on this blog, like the inventive retelling of Israel’s history is Chronicles, is the very stuff of professional biblical scholars, but among evangelicals it does not filter down to non-specialists. In a nutshell, I think this is the problem with lay-readers (this is very reductionistic, so forgive me) who are looking for fresh, needed innovation in reading the Bible for looking at difficult issues like evolution but have few resources. I might recommend a commentary by Ray Dillard (a seminary professor of mine) on 2 Chronicles, although it is a bit technical. I address the issue generally in my book Inspiration and Incarnation, although there might jot be enough there to keep you satisfied.
Reply to this commentMarch 3rd 2010
Hi Dr. Sparks,
I agree there are church fathers and even Jewish philosophers like Philo who employed allegorical interpretations of Genesis and rejected absolutely literalistic interpretations. However. . . Augustine assumes an overall creation that is “young” and a literal Adam and Eve, and even adds that Christians “must” believe in a literally firm firmament with waters above it.
“. . . 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] “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. . . . 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 work on Genesis]
Reply to this commentMarch 3rd 2010
CONTINUED FROM ABOVE
1000 years later Martin Luther was continuing to say and teach the same thing as Augustine, namely that Christians “must believe” there are waters above the sun, moon, and stars:
“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].
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