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But what is the difference between saying it is historically true but not literally true? Where are you drawing the distinctions?

The Bible teaches us many truths. Many are what I’ll call timeless truths; the others are temporal truths.

Some examples of timeless truths: that God is one, that God loves his people, that God always acts and saves through grace.

Some temporal truths: that we have a single mediator Jesus and can approach the throne under his authority, that through the indwelling of the spirit we can pray and commune with the Godhead at any time.

These temporal truths were not always true. They became true at a point in history, in those examples at the death of Jesus and Pentecost.

It is possible to have allegories of both timeless and temporal truths. The prodigal son story is an extended allegory of many timeless truths. The “throne” idea is an allegory itself… if the Father is spirit he cannot have an actual throne!

What I am saying is that Genesis teaches us many temporal truths, about events in history and their consequences. Those truths may be taught through allegory, but allegory does not mean that the truths are as timeless as God himself.

I do not believe this is a controversial position to hold. For example, unlike the timeless Covenant of Redemption, the Covenant of Works is generally said to have been made with Adam at a specific time. As Michael Horton says in Introducing Covenant Theology, the timing is important as it was made both pre-fall and pre-grace, “humanity in Adam was neither sinful nor confirmed in righteousness.” Noah’s covenant similarly is a renewal or re-giving of this first covenant, and was given at a specific point in time to a specific recipients (in this case all humans and land animals.)

What I mean by saying there can be historical truth without literal truth is that the temporal truths these stories tell us do not require every detail to be interpreted in the strictest literalistic way. I do not think that Genesis 3 requires that the deceiver have actually possessed a serpent and made it speak. But I do believe the story teaches us truths about temporal events, and not timeless truths about the human condition.

Your point about Jesus’ narratives only show what I am suggesting. His stories generally taught timeless truths: the value of the God’s kingdom, God’s extreme fatherly love, or the love a believer should show others. Now some of the parables do teach temporal truths too, like the one of the vine-growers, but I think the context makes it clear that Jesus is talking about what would soon happen to him.

And the moment we insist the world was made in a historical 6 days, we lose symbolic importance. We are reducing the passage to an arbitrary list of what happened when. The text becomes more like an engineer’s blueprint than a theological statement correcting other statements. It becomes important that God made light on day one, well, because that is what happened. And the other stuff happened on the other days because…. well, that is what happened, END OF STORY! It’s arbitrary and strange and conflicts with what we know from science. Any following myth is a deviation from an Engineer’s manual, and we have to go back to that manual to correct the technical misunderstanding of the myth. But what do these technical details mean in and of themselves. Why did God make light on day 1? What does it MEAN? Nothing… it’s just the way it happened.

I disagree. Our God is the God who makes the symbolic reality. By your interpretation we would have to say that all the technical details of the tabernacle and temple’s construction are meaningless. But that is not the case! All of the objects and their materials and colours and sizes all have deep interpretations, and it is the same with the sacrifices. We know that in the end the whole system was only given to the Israelites to point them to Jesus: both the big picture and the details tell us a lot about Jesus, and when taught well Exodus and Leviticus are fascinating and exciting books for Christians.

In some ways it is arbitrary… God could have made the world in any way he wanted, and all of those ways would be equally arbitrary. For us to have light (or warmth) God had to make light, and so arbitrariness is unavoidable! He could have chosen to make light on any day, and the “he made it cause he felt like it” interpretation would still be as valid as it is now. But the text teaches us more truth than that, with God’s first act to make the orderly light conquer the chaotic darkness. But why exclude the possibility that God used the universe’s creation as an object lesson? It doesn’t remove the theological lessons, it reminds us of them constantly (or would if we weren’t so caught up in our selfish ways.)

Luke, you sound like Doug!
Don’t you see the inconsistencies in what you’re saying? Science says miracles and the supernatural are impossible, as it rightly should. The whole idea of science is that it only works assuming nothing supernatural has happened. But the creation of the world is one of the biggest interventions God has have done, and so science is very limited in what it can tell us about the world’s creation. To say that God has intervened in something is to say science can’t tell us about it.

As Dave says, the scriptures tell us what we need to know to be reconciled with God, which nature cannot do. It may tell us about the might of God, but that only denies us excuses, not reveals to us salvation (Romans 1.) In addition, I think the message of God, giving by the creator of language, is far more understandable than our interpretations of the non-linguistic creation. If God created our capabilities for language then he would have done so in such a way that the Gospel is communicable in all human languages. So why would he prefer non-linguistic means of communication? Now you really do sound like Doug… to prefer natural revelation over special revelation is to deny God’s genius and creativity in inventing human language.

The whole idea of science is that it only works assuming nothing supernatural has happened

Well, yes, it is trying to find the natural causes and ‘laws’ of nature.

Don’t you see the inconsistencies in what you’re saying? Science says miracles and the supernatural are impossible, as it rightly should.

No, that’s putting it a bit too strongly. Science can say nothing about the impossibility of miracles because it cannot make claims about anything beyond this physical universe and whether or not there is anything that could intervene.

Dannii,
while I agree with most of what you write about temporal and eternal truths, and the manner in which the bible uses imagery and allegory to describe both of these, I still think you’re ignoring the genre of Genesis too much and stretching your claims beyond credibility.

Insisting Genesis 1 is a literalistic, historical truth and that God purpose-built the universe in a truly bizarre way (creating “light” before the sources of light) merely as a pre-emptive debunk of the Enuma Elish (which the text obviously is) seems to be pushing it to me, dancing on the edge, with pirouettes thrown in for good measure. I’m sorry I can’t dance with you, but I’m glad that we can both celebrate that:
This is God’s word.
Whatever it says is actually true truth regarding God being the creator of this world (and all the other eternal truths the passage spells out).
We only disagree on the genre, not the meaning.

I still think there are ways to reconcile that modern sentient “God aware” human beings die because of sin, and yet may have arrived on the scene through the long process of evolution. Remember the special language about a unique garden and a tree of life!

However, I just can’t accept that this many godly Christians are participating in the enormous hoax and fraud called “evolution” and an old universe. God would be far more complicated and “tricky” if literalistic Creationism were indeed the case.

Regards

No, that’s putting it a bit too strongly. Science can say nothing about the impossibility of miracles because it cannot make claims about anything beyond this physical universe and whether or not there is anything that could intervene.

Yeah exactly. What I meant was that people like Spong will say things like “Science says the resurrection can’t have happened!” and so they deny what the Bible has said. But they have missed the point entirely, which is that it was a miracle!

Dannii,
while I agree with most of what you write about temporal and eternal truths, and the manner in which the bible uses imagery and allegory to describe both of these, I still think you’re ignoring the genre of Genesis too much and stretching your claims beyond credibility.

I still think there are ways to reconcile that modern sentient “God aware” human beings die because of sin, and yet may have arrived on the scene through the long process of evolution. Remember the special language about a unique garden and a tree of life!

Thanks Dave, this has been a good discussion. You may well be right, and as I continue to study these ideas I may be persuaded. I’m currently studying Romans 5:12-21, and might post up what I find.

Hey mate,
check out this letter to The Briefing after their Genesis article a while back.

Adam and Eve were told they would ‘die’ the same day as they ate the forbidden fruit, but they lived on and had all their children after being evicted from the Garden.

http://matthiasmedia.com.au/briefing/library/4045

The ESV says

  15The LORD God took the man(O) and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil(P) you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat[d] of it you(Q) shall surely die.”

So exactly which death is really being pictured here? Adam and Eve DIE on the day they eat of the fruit (or decide to make the rules for themselves, IF the whole tree thing is symbolic).

This following guy sums up some of what I’ve been trying to argue as well, written far more clearly than some of my late night rants.

It seems that a major theological issue which needs addressing at some stage is that of how death can fit into a ‘good’ or ‘pre-fall’ world. No less than 6 responses out of the 14 which you published raised this as a problem. Given the statement that this was “as full and representative a sample as possible” of the correspondence received, it seems this issue is a tremendous stumbling block for Christians wishing to interact with the scientific world view—perhaps second only to the issue of sola scriptura.

Now it does seem that whenever this issue is raised by ‘young earth’ advocates, the suggestion is that those of us who have accepted the old earth/evolutionary explanation of origins have somehow neglected to consider this theological ‘problem’. It is further suggested that this ‘problem’ is destructive to the gospel of redemption, thus making the issue both emotive and urgent.

Two things need to be said. Firstly, we need to acknowledge that this is indeed an issue which needs careful consideration and thought, as it does represent a shift from what the church has historically taught and believed. It seems to me that ever since Augustine, the church has formulated the gospel in terms of “a perfect original world ruined by original sin, but then ultimately redeemed back to perfection by Christ”. This idea of a ‘perfect’ world has subsequently been conceived by generations of Christians as a utopian paradise where animals do not die, there are no earthquakes or cyclones or bushfires, and no one suffers physical pain. We must definitely acknowledge that this traditional conception of the ‘perfect’ world cannot co-exist with acceptance of an old earth/evolutionary viewpoint. A degree of cognitive dissonance is therefore inevitable.

Secondly, however, it also must be stressed that the majority of Christians who accept an old earth have not done so unthinkingly. We have thought these issues through, and have managed to adjust our thinking in order to relieve the dissonance. Furthermore, we have done this in a way that does justice to the biblical teaching. What it involves, at a basic level, is a careful consideration of what “very good” really means. Does a “very good” world necessarily exclude such things as animal death, earthquakes and pathogenic bacteria? Does the Bible force the picture of a pre-fall utopian paradise on us, or is that just something our minds have conjured up?

More importantly, we must assert that redemption is first and foremost from sin and its effects. That is the heart of the gospel, not the mechanics of the external universe. If Jesus’ death means we can look forward to a new creation without selfishness, murder, greed and idolatry, would it really be such a big deal if our pet animals were still mortal?

So in summary, yes, a shift in thinking is necessary, but no, the gospel is not threatened. What is needed is a careful exploration of what ideas about the pre-fall world are mandated by the Bible, and what ideas are based on tradition and therefore may be discarded.

And so I have to ask you, have you considered the exponential growth of the rabbits yet? With exponential growth being such a powerful phenomena I’m pretty sure a “no death whatsoever” Eden would have seen the mass of breeding animals weighing more than our solar system by now, and depending on the exponential modelling of breeding cycles, maybe even more than the weight of our whole galaxy… or is that the entire universe?

(EDIT: Following sentence was clumsy so I’ll try again).

I imagine that if some species were immortal,  they wouldn’t increase by a mere 7% a year as I’ve discussed in previous examples, but might multiply 70 times a year. Just think of fish spawning and Guinea Pigs breeding. Here’s a grizzly little detail I found out about Guinea Pigs. (Oh the joys of parenthood!) Did you know that if you buy a female and it is pregnant, the male it might give birth to can mate with it within 14 days of birth! They need to be weaned from their mothers within 10 days of birth so you can separate them and not let them mate with their mothers! Eewww.

But that’s a FAST breeding cycle!

So either the animals can no longer breed at some point, defying the ‘fill the earth’ breeding imperatives from Chapter 1, or the animals end up weighing more than the universe, or they die.

20And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds[g] fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21So(M) God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22And God blessed them, saying,(N) “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

How are you going on this one Dannii?

Do you still use the argument?

The truth parables give is very different. The truth of the 4 soils is for example that though the gospel may seem to take effect, it may not have any roots. If no farmer actually ever did anything like the parable, the message is still true.

It’s different with this creation polemic idea though. The truth a polemic would try to show is something along the lines of the sun being created to serve the earth and mankind. However if the sun wasn’t created first, it isn’t true and the polemic doesn’t work. If the sun was created first, why not worship it at a level slightly lower than whichever god created it?

http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com/2007/11/problems-with-creation-science-i.html

I still don’t understand the argument. The Enuma Elish tells one story, and so the Hebrew writer corrects it and tells another. The Enuma Elish tells a pagan story, so the Hebrew writer totally debunks it, with the authority of the God who acts. And many of the themes in this story are set up for purposes later in the bible.

If God is using a story to correct another story, who are we to argue? I argue in metaphors and stories all the time.
EG: Person: “The future is going to be like Star-Trek”.
Dave: “No, it’s going to be like Blade Runner, only more desperate. It could even hit Mad Max.”
Person: “No, you’re wrong. It’s going to be Star-Trek, and we’ll even live for a thousand years.”
Dave: “No, it’s going to be ‘Book of Eli’.”

And this is just our opinions on the future. When arguing facts, such as the best analogy to explain various scientific processes, then metaphors are often used. We think in stories. Those stories do not have to be ‘literally’ true to contain ‘literary’ truth.

You see? Modern concerns forced onto the passage.

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2010/09/23/scripture-and-science-again/comment-page-1/#comment-8054

There’s some recent thinking of mine.

Various kinds of literature can be used to express various theological points. But with this topic I believe it is of fundamental importance that we be able to say with certainty some limited facts about reality. Our metanarratives must be connected to reality.

Oooh, I’ve just had a thought which I hope succinctly expresses my concerns: we must have a doctrine of the fall and not merely a doctrine of fallenness.

This is because we have a doctrine of salvation and not merely a doctrine of savedness. Salvation is a doctrine of process, not a doctrine of immutable state, and must be understood in the context of a prior doctrine of process, the fall, not a doctrine of state.

Oooh, I’ve just had a thought which I hope succinctly expresses my concerns: we must have a doctrine of the fall and not merely a doctrine of fallenness.

This is because we have a doctrine of salvation and not merely a doctrine of savedness. Salvation is a doctrine of process, not a doctrine of immutable state, and must be understood in the context of a prior doctrine of process, the fall, not a doctrine of state.

 
 
I agree, that’s my concern too.
I see it as having implications for theodicy as well. 
 
The standard theodicy I am familiar with goes something like: The bad things are not there by God’s original design, but because we live in a fallen world, due to human sin.
Which assumes a before and after state.  Before: All is good, as created by God.  After: All messed up, because of the fall.
 
But if you take the story of the fall as allegorical, a story to describe the sinfulness of us all - then there is no before and after, and this theodicy falls apart, surely?
   
‘It’s a fallen world’ is what many Christians say, to explain all kinds of evil and suffering.  But if there is no actual fall process, how can it be fallen?  Doesn’t that then make the use of the word ‘fallen’ a(n unconscious?) semantic trick, giving us permission to take on the comforting thought that this world with its evils and suffering is not what God intended, but removing the essential doctrine of an actual fall that supports that view.
     
What are you left with, then?  God created a ‘fallen’ cosmos?  Does that make sense?  Doesn’t that really mean God created a flawed cosmos?  And so, what about redemption – wouldn’t that then mean the purpose of redemption is to fix those flaws?  That would be serious.  I mean seriously defaming to God’s honour and glory.

But theistic evolutionists believe in a fall, at some point, somewhere.

Of course many theistic evolutionists do. But there’s definitely no consensus about what the “fall” was/means!

There are I think some theistic evolutionists who share my doctrine of the fall. I remember some debates at the old forum with Gordo where he reached that conclusion. For those who have that kind of believe I’m content, with nothing more to debate. I’ll let them sort out alone how to reconcile it with the rest of their beliefs.

Most however have a very different doctrine of the fall. Probably most commonly physical death is not part of the fall’s punishments and consequences. Or perhaps it’s only a local fall. I’m interested in hearing how these doctrines work, because the details matter. But so far none of them sufficiently address my concerns (see some of my comments in the blog I linked to above.) If they did address my concerns I could well change my beliefs, it’s happened before!

I think part of the problem is expressed well by Denis Alexander, a Christian thinker and biological scientist:

Unfortunately, however, many people have tried to hijack the theory of evolution to support all kinds of ideologies. Evolution has been used to support racism, communism, capitalism and other ideologies – many of them mutually incompatible. But evolution is simply a biological theory – quite incapable of such Herculean ideological tasks.

http://www.bethinking.org/science-christianity/intermediate/is-evolution-atheistic.htm

So if I at all ‘side’ with evolutionary theory, it is merely because I respect the scientists I hear from that side of the debate — especially the many Christian biologists — not because of any suspected ideological sympathies with any other agendas people have added to the theory!

This post by Reformed Academic seems to be reviewing a Creationist attack on Denis Alexander’s books (amongst other authors).

http://reformedacademic.blogspot.com/search/label/Clarion

The Creationists are in italics, R.A answer in the normal text.

28. The biological theory of evolution cannot account for the special character of humanity. Christians who support the theory generally acknowledge that human death is a consequence of human sin. Scripture nowhere claims that animal death is a consequence of human sin, or that animal death is evil. Life was promised for obedience, and this was rejected by man. Some of these matters are discussed at length by Dr. Jitse van der Meer in his paper, “God, Natural Evil, and Biological Evolution” (Reformed Academic, 6 October 2009; see this blog posting).

I have heard some theistic evolutionist’s (TE’s from here on in) say human bodily death is not so much the issue, as is spiritual death. I’m not comfortable with this claim… but have to consider it against the biblical evidence. The ‘sting of death is sin’ verse seems to indicate to ‘bodily death’ TE’s that death might not be such an issue if we had not sinned, and I can see their case (even though I’m not comfortable with it). Surely the verse should be rendered… “The sting of sin is DEATH!” But no, it IS the other way around.

What do we do about that?

I don’t think the Bible makes it clear about animal death. Romans 5 possibly suggests that it does, but that depends on which of the main interpretations of “world” you take. More generally however I think the Bible does teach that because of Adam’s federal headship the fall was not a human thing alone. No the corruption spread universally. You then have to decide whether nature red in tooth and claw is a corruption or not. I think that the general teaching is that it is, but I’ll admit that there are some tricky passages, like Job 39.

So I’m usually content if people say that human death is a result of sin. But such a belief is already at odds with human evolution, so then the debate shifts to what God did to turn a non-human into a human.

As to 1 Corinthians 15:56, here are what some other translations say. I don’t know which translations have good merits, but there’s certainly some variation here:

For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. (NLT)
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. (ESV, NIV, TNIV)
Sin is what gives death its sting, and the Law is the power behind sin. (CEV)
Death’s power to hurt is sin, and the power of sin is the law. (NCV)
The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. (NKJV)

And Hosea 13:14 is different altogether (1 Corinthians used the LXX I think.)

Can you please explain federal headship a bit more? Where does this come from? I have some suspicions as to where the concept comes from, but would love to hear more.

(I don’t see any evidence that the food chain as we see it is corruption. Many verses talk about God providing the predators with their meal, even though that predator is still going to do their ‘thang’).

I don’t think the Bible makes it clear about animal death. Romans 5 possibly suggests that it does, but that depends on which of the main interpretations of “world” you take. More generally however I think the Bible does teach that because of Adam’s federal headship the fall was not a human thing alone. No the corruption spread universally. You then have to decide whether nature red in tooth and claw is a corruption or not. I think that the general teaching is that it is, but I’ll admit that there are some tricky passages, like Job 39.

So I’m usually content if people say that human death is a result of sin. But such a belief is already at odds with human evolution, so then the debate shifts to what God did to turn a non-human into a human.

Remember this one by Packer?
http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/media/audio/creation_evolution_problems/

Federal headship is a pretty common doctrine I would think. It’s just the idea that God appointed Adam has head not just over Eve, nor his family, but all humanity and over all the world. Adam was the head of the world. And then Christ is the new head of the world, because as Adam brought sin and death and corruption to the whole world, now Christ brings salvation and life and a renewing.

As I said it’s not a big issue for me. But how do you see the verses about the lion and the lamb being at peace with each other? If the food chain is how it was always meant to be, why look forward to that?

I do, though I can’t remember what he said that’d be relevant to this discussion. Can you elaborate?

1. Adam’s Federal headship:
If Genesis as God’s word is allegorical / largely metaphorical in the first 11 chapters**, then I see the concerns of Genesis as local to the ancient world of that time, and especially the unfolding story of God’s dealings with a particular family in the Ancient Near East. As a result, some theistic evolutionist writers like Denis Alexander see Adam’s headship as the way the human race collectively fell, where-ever they were.

2. Animal suffering: I see the lion and the lamb as figurative of peace in the New Earth. As CS Lewis said, if the Lion and Lamb became friends it is only because the Lion ceases to be a Lion!

** While I tend to take Wenham’s view that the first 11 Chapters of Genesis are largely metaphorical / creative narratives, I take it there is real history behind these events that is transliterated into a carefully constructed Hebrew form.

EG: There where real first humans who turned their back on God, and there was a real (local and very traumatic) flood of some sort with an ark rescuing God’s chosen representative of God’s chosen family. But the focus is on God’s dealings with this chosen family, not on the Australian Aboriginals.

Lastly, and most importantly, should we postpone this until after this next month? You should get back to your thesis! Sorry for distracting you.

Hi Dave, if Dannii’s gone back to his thesis, I’ll jump in.

But theistic evolutionists believe in a fall, at some point, somewhere.

There seems to be a range of opinion, some (most?) of which I can’t pin down on this point.  For example, if someone was to say ‘Adam and Eve is allegorical’, what does that mean - allegorical for what? 
I see you agree there is some corresponding real event(s) behind the story:

I take it there is real history behind these events that is transliterated into a carefully constructed Hebrew form.

but ISTM some people don’t. 
Do you agree that it’s a problem to not believe in a real historical fall of some sort?
 
Just trying to form a set of parameters for my thinking.  I really ignored all this stuff as in the too-hard-basket until quite recently.  I’m finding it important now to have a better thought-out postion, in order to engage with some family members.
 
            ......
         
Looking at 1 Cor 15:54-56,
my New Bible Commentary says: “Death is swallowed up…(cf. v26(The last enemy to be destroyed is death)); a free quotation from Is 25:8(he will swallow up death for ever.  The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.  The Lord has spoken), followed by one from Ho. 13:14 (I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.  Where O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave is you destruction?) Paul speaks of the ultimate destruction of death.  At present death is still operative; it retains its sting, ie: sin, which gives death its power of wounding mortally.  Death follows sin not simply as a biological but as a moral consequence.  Paul frequently connects sin, law, and death, though he does not develop the theme here (see, eg: Rom 5:13,7:7-25)”
 
My Greek/direct translation interlinear Bible says for v55-56 ‘Where of thee, [O] death, the victory?  where of thee,[O] death, the sting?  Now the sting of death [is] sin, and the power of sin[is] the law;’  That’s pretty close to the NIV.  (Dunno about ‘thee’ in Greek; seems affected or an AV hangover.)
 
So… I take from that, that ‘death’ here doesn’t mean the death of an individual or individuals, but Death, the enemy, the grim reaper if you like, whose power over us, or sting, is our sin - which is objectified and made potent in God’s law which we have broken.

1. Adam’s Federal headship:
If Genesis as God’s word is allegorical / largely metaphorical in the first 11 chapters**, then I see the concerns of Genesis as local to the ancient world of that time, and especially the unfolding story of God’s dealings with a particular family in the Ancient Near East. As a result, some theistic evolutionist writers like Denis Alexander see Adam’s headship as the way the human race collectively fell, where-ever they were.

Honestly, that sounds like crap. It feels to me like something someone with no understand of ancient culture (not that I do understand fully!) would say.

I would think you’d be big on this, as one of the timeless truths that don’t need history to be true, that Genesis 1 teaches humanity, Adam, was put in charge by God over the whole world. I believe when Adam sinned the whole world became infiltrated and has been slowly becoming more saturation in the results of sinful corruption. When Adam sinned he gave his authority to Satan, which is why he was called the “prince of this world”, at least until Jesus rose again and became the true heir of the earth. How do the logistics work? If the fall refers to a gradual and distributed event then how can the consequences rock the whole earth? What the lands of the later sinners stay uncorrupted while the world around them starts dying? Or does everyone in some miracle decide to reject God at the same instant? If that’s what happened then how does authority and headship work within humanity? We were in Adam but now we’re in Christ. If everyone was actually their own highest authority when they sinned then what does it mean to have been in Adam?

2. Animal suffering: I see the lion and the lamb as figurative of peace in the New Earth. As CS Lewis said, if the Lion and Lamb became friends it is only because the Lion ceases to be a Lion!

I wouldn’t want to limit God so much that he could only be glorified through a carnivorous lion! We see the world how it is now but our knowledge of what it was like pre-fall is scarce. When Adam named the lion, exerting his authority over it and all, who knows what it was like.

** While I tend to take Wenham’s view that the first 11 Chapters of Genesis are largely metaphorical / creative narratives, I take it there is real history behind these events that is transliterated into a carefully constructed Hebrew form.

That’s pretty similar to my current hypothesis. I think that Moses/other editors took existing “historical” records that had been passed down from the patriarchs and then shaped them into the particular literary form which we have now. It’s the true reality-based history that gives the polemic its power. The genre may not be history and history may not be its main aim, but it’s the background history which is communicated which supports what’s out in front and gives it its strength.

EG: There where real first humans who turned their back on God, and there was a real (local and very traumatic) flood of some sort with an ark rescuing God’s chosen representative of God’s chosen family. But the focus is on God’s dealings with this chosen family, not on the Australian Aboriginals.

What do you make of Noah’s covenant then? I believe that the flood was a huge event of recreation - God effectively started again except that he didn’t create new life but saved a handful of the existing life. But he then reappointed humanity as his authority over the earth, giving them a covenant with commands, and with the blessing of new rights which had previously been the prerogative of God alone. Some say that Noah’s covenant is like a re-giving of Adam’s covenant, but I think the cultural concept of a covenant only arose later (but before Noah obviously. It then developed further by the time we get to Abram and then even more by Deuteronomy!) It definite shares the same themes and sentiments though: God creates, God blesses, he appoints man as his representative, tells them to fill the earth. How do you keep that if it’s a local flood?

Sorry for this long post, but I wanted to be clear.

I would think you’d be big on this, as one of the timeless truths that don’t need history to be true, that Genesis 1 teaches humanity, Adam, was put in charge by God over the whole world.

Genesis 1 doesn’t mention Adam in my NIV but ‘male and female’. This seems to me to indicate that the very strong metaphorical language continues in following chapters, even if these metaphors are moving away from the Framework metaphors of Genesis 1. After all, what does Adam mean? What does Eve mean? And what is mentioned in Genesis 1 about who the first humans were? Male and female, emphasised again and again.

However, just because I’m pointing to some of the literary structures of the passage does not mean I’m discounting a historical event. There was, no doubt in my mind, a fall. But did it involve a talking snake? I find that unlikely: where does the bible explain why other animals do not talk? Why did snakes lose their power of speech? I would have thought that was the ultimate curse for tempting Adam and Eve, but Gen 3 only says the serpent would be ‘grounded’. ;-)

How do the logistics work? If the fall refers to a gradual and distributed event then how can the consequences rock the whole earth? What the lands of the later sinners stay uncorrupted while the world around them starts dying? Or does everyone in some miracle decide to reject God at the same instant? If that’s what happened then how does authority and headship work within humanity? We were in Adam but now we’re in Christ. If everyone was actually their own highest authority when they sinned then what does it mean to have been in Adam?

I wouldn’t want to limit God so much that he could only be glorified through a carnivorous lion! We see the world how it is now but our knowledge of what it was like pre-fall is scarce. When Adam named the lion, exerting his authority over it and all, who knows what it was like.

We do. If we are meant to take science seriously, we do. If we are meant to read the book of God’s word and the book of God’s world, we know certain animals had evolved in a certain way at certain times in history. By the time the first humans arrived, whenever that was according to what you define as ‘human’, the lion always been a carnivore. At least as far as humanity is concerned. It has a carnivorous digestive tract that only really functions properly with meat. The lion can’t process grass the way a cow can. It would starve. To be a lion is to be a hunter. This means it was ‘created’ that way, and animal death is part of God’s GOOD design. I emphasise this point following on from Mark Baddedley’s work.

http://reflectionsinexile.blogspot.com/2007/11/problems-with-creation-science-iv-when.html

It’s the true reality-based history that gives the polemic its power. The genre may not be history and history may not be its main aim, but it’s the background history which is communicated which supports what’s out in front and gives it its strength.

And we have finally come full circle, back to the reason I woke this conversation up again. Creationists just assert that a pagan mythology has to be counteracted by a scientifically accurate statement of events. Why? Just consider the radical truths Jesus taught about how all those Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in him. Consider how he taught most of them! They were parables and metaphors. The Good Samaritan is no less teaching truth than the histories of Chronicles, even if the Good Samaritan is not itself teaching history. The story still teaches theological truth, even if it is not literally true.

Now, Noah’s covenant. If theistic evolutionists can appeal to Adam’s Federal headship over the human race as the reason for the fall, an event that somehow incorporating all of us in it,  however it actually occurred literally (as opposed to the literary symbols we are given in the bible),  then doesn’t it flow logically that God’s covenant with Noah could be the same?

There are some challenges.

Richard Deem presents biblical evidence for a local flood. There are certain inconsistencies in the passage that cry out for examination!
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html

EG: If the flood covered the ‘whole earth’ (kol erets) then did the ‘whole earth’ dry up and become a global desert with no water, as indicated in the later part of Noah’s story? The same words are used, kol erets.

That is just one argument for reconsidering this passage. There are many, many others, including the VAST number of times kol erets is clearly used to describe ‘the whole land’ in the bible.

However even Richard sees that while the flood itself was a local event, it was a universal condemnation of ‘all flesh’, or all human life, because all of humanity was gathered there. We had not yet moved out over the face of all the earth. (According to Genesis anyway). The great dispersal of Babel had not yet happened.

That argument feels a little scientifically constrained. Are we really going to place the flood 200 thousand years ago in Africa? That’s the last time the human race was ‘all together in one place’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans

It also appears inconsistent with the ‘all flesh’ argument in the passage. If we do have to take it that all human beings were wiped out, then we also have to take it that all animal life was wiped out. That takes us back to a global flood, which Creationists try to use as the “God of the gaps” deus ex machina argument to explain everything but everything that doesn’t make sense in their theories.  Any evidence for evolution that they don’t like is explained as ‘the flood did it’. Hmmm.

My solution? This story follows the history of God’s chosen people in a certain part of the world, ‘the land’. That’s all I can come up with. I want to be honest to the science, the book of God’s world, and while also wrestling with the book of God’s Word. I know too many Christian biologists that confirm evolution to just write it off, and too many criss-crossing overlays of various disciplines of science to write it off. They all seem to confirm a vastly old universe and planet. And, to be honest,  I know too many Creationist arguments that sound constrained and dishonest, even to my lay person’s ears.

So having missed the ‘framework’ theory of Genesis 1 until maybe 1992, and only recently becoming aware of the amazing Chiastic structures in Noah’s story, I’m left wondering what other amazing literary constructs there are in Genesis? Understanding God’s word is quite the adventure. I believe there was a flood. Was it the Black Sea event? Was it some super-Mesopotamian flood? And how literally true do I need the Noah story to be to be theologically true, even if it has taken some literary licence to make some points, and correct some of the other ancient world flood narratives? These are questions I am still wrestling with. (Note: That last sentence may have sounded like I was doubting God’s word as God’s word, and I’m not… I was expressing questions about how literally it is telling the story. Whatever the case, it is still God’s word).

But right now I’ve got to get back to my own study. ;-)

Genesis 1 doesn’t mention Adam in my NIV but ‘male and female’. This seems to me to indicate that the very strong metaphorical language continues in following chapters, even if these metaphors are moving away from the Framework metaphors of Genesis 1. After all, what does Adam mean? What does Eve mean? And what is mentioned in Genesis 1 about who the first humans were? Male and female, emphasised again and again.

Genesis 1 says that God created him, male and female he created them. So humanity as a whole were put in authority over the earth, both male and female. It’s in Genesis 2 that we see that God also put the man in authority over the woman, which is why, I think, that the NT talks about us all being in Adam and not us all being in Adam and Eve.

However, just because I’m pointing to some of the literary structures of the passage does not mean I’m discounting a historical event. There was, no doubt in my mind, a fall. But did it involve a talking snake? I find that unlikely: where does the bible explain why other animals do not talk? Why did snakes lose their power of speech? I would have thought that was the ultimate curse for tempting Adam and Eve, but Gen 3 only says the serpent would be ‘grounded’. ;-)

Well while I think it was Satan in the form of a snake, I think it’s also possible this is one of those non-historical literary features. The historical truth is that Satan tempted them, which Moses shaped into the snake when he formed it into the literary text we have now.

We do. If we are meant to take science seriously, we do. If we are meant to read the book of God’s word and the book of God’s world, we know certain animals had evolved in a certain way at certain times in history. By the time the first humans arrived, whenever that was according to what you define as ‘human’, the lion always been a carnivore. At least as far as humanity is concerned. It has a carnivorous digestive tract that only really functions properly with meat. The lion can’t process grass the way a cow can. It would starve. To be a lion is to be a hunter. This means it was ‘created’ that way, and animal death is part of God’s GOOD design. I emphasise this point following on from Mark Baddedley’s work.

Do we have evidence of what it’s digestive tract was like when the first humans arrived? What we see now can’t tell us what it was like before the fall (unless you have fossilised digestive tracts of pre-fall lions!) We’re then left with how we understand the virtues of a lion. I don’t see the lions hunting as intrinsic, but rather as a way in which God is glorified when we see how the lion’s physical attributes and strength has allowed it to adapt and become the king of the jungle.

It’s similar to Israel. Israel was to be a powerful warmongering nation, commanded to commit genocide against the Canaanites. When it did this it brought God great glory - his name became known! To be an Israelite was to be a war-criminal. But is that how Adam and Eve were? No way! Despite human sin and despite the world’s corruptions God was able to turn a bad situation into a good one. It’s the same with the lion.

And we have finally come full circle, back to the reason I woke this conversation up again. Creationists just assert that a pagan mythology has to be counteracted by a scientifically accurate statement of events. Why? Just consider the radical truths Jesus taught about how all those Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in him. Consider how he taught most of them! They were parables and metaphors. The Good Samaritan is no less teaching truth than the histories of Chronicles, even if the Good Samaritan is not itself teaching history. The story still teaches theological truth, even if it is not literally true.

Sure they both teach truths, but they teach different truths! What if Chronicles/Samuel/Kings was unhistorical and God hadn’t made a covenant with David that his dynasty would never die out? What if God had never actually spoken to the prophets to tell them about the coming Messiah, and they’d just made it up? Some truths aren’t dependent on history. Others are.

I’d also appreciate it if you didn’t twist my words. Nowhere have I said they need to be scientifically accurate! I haven’t even said they need to be historically accurate! What I’ve been saying is that there needs to be basis in history. The historical basis was that Satan tempted them. He may or may not have appeared like a serpent. The historical basis is that Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command. That command may or may not have been about eating fruit off a tree. But this is different from Jesus’s parables… if there was no good Samaritan Jesus’s teachings about our moral duties still hold out. I believe that if the historical basis of Adam and Eve’s disobedience didn’t happen then the teachings don’t hold out (although many disagree. I’m keen to try to understand how those who don’t believe in a reality-based fall understand it all.) Am I making sense?

Now, Noah’s covenant. If theistic evolutionists can appeal to Adam’s Federal headship over the human race as the reason for the fall, an event that somehow incorporating all of us in it,  however it actually occurred literally (as opposed to the literary symbols we are given in the bible),  then doesn’t it flow logically that God’s covenant with Noah could be the same?

I think that the TE approaches to Adam don’t hold water so I doubt their Noah will stay afloat either! :P

I think that the Noah story should either be grounded in a real global flood or else be ahistorical. I think it is easier to make the theology work with an ahistorical flood than a local one. Of course there were local floods, but it doesn’t help to connect them to the Biblical narrative. Yes, this is me telling you to allegorise!

EG: If the flood covered the ‘whole earth’ (kol erets) then did the ‘whole earth’ dry up and become a global desert with no water, as indicated in the later part of Noah’s story? The same words are used, kol erets.

That is just one argument for reconsidering this passage. There are many, many others, including the VAST number of times kol erets is clearly used to describe ‘the whole land’ in the bible.

But words have multiple meanings, even in the one context. Think of Genesis 1 (I’m hoping you’ll agree with me here since you won’t be tied to trying to fit the story to history so you’ll let it just be literature.) In verse 5 God calls the light “day” . And then there was evening and morning, one “day”. Day meaning a full cycle of light and dark, and day referring to that light part alone.

Now as to Noah I can’t find which verse you’re referring to as the later part of the story. Even so, floods only cover land anyway, not oceans.

However even Richard sees that while the flood itself was a local event, it was a universal condemnation of ‘all flesh’, or all human life, because all of humanity was gathered there. We had not yet moved out over the face of all the earth. (According to Genesis anyway). The great dispersal of Babel had not yet happened.

How can we know that for certain? You really think in all of that time they’d never left a single valley? Even before the Babel dispersion I’m sure that they would have had a few people at other places for mining etc. What about wanderers like Cain? He wasn’t with the rest of them!

My solution? This story follows the history of God’s chosen people in a certain part of the world, ‘the land’. That’s all I can come up with. I want to be honest to the science, the book of God’s world, and while also wrestling with the book of God’s Word. I know too many Christian biologists that confirm evolution to just write it off, and too many criss-crossing overlays of various disciplines of science to write it off. They all seem to confirm a vastly old universe and planet. And, to be honest,  I know too many Creationist arguments that sound constrained and dishonest, even to my lay person’s ears.

So having missed the ‘framework’ theory of Genesis 1 until maybe 1992, and only recently becoming aware of the amazing Chiastic structures in Noah’s story, I’m left wondering what other amazing literary constructs there are in Genesis? Understanding God’s word is quite the adventure. I believe there was a flood. Was it the Black Sea event? Was it some super-Mesopotamian flood? And how literally true do I need the Noah story to be to be theologically true, even if it has taken some literary licence to make some points, and correct some of the other ancient world flood narratives? These are questions I am still wrestling with. (Note: That last sentence may have sounded like I was doubting God’s word as God’s word, and I’m not… I was expressing questions about how literally it is telling the story. Whatever the case, it is still God’s word).

My advice, if it’s too much for you to question the timeframes evolution tells us, then just don’t even try to connect the Noah story to history. Keep it ahistorical. It will still keep a lot of its theological purpose.

I’d also appreciate it if you didn’t twist my words. Nowhere have I said they need to be scientifically accurate! I haven’t even said they need to be historically accurate! What I’ve been saying is that there needs to be basis in history. The historical basis was that Satan tempted them. He may or may not have appeared like a serpent. The historical basis is that Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command. That command may or may not have been about eating fruit off a tree. But this is different from Jesus’s parables… if there was no good Samaritan Jesus’s teachings about our moral duties still hold out. I believe that if the historical basis of Adam and Eve’s disobedience didn’t happen then the teachings don’t hold out (although many disagree. I’m keen to try to understand how those who don’t believe in a reality-based fall understand it all.) Am I making sense?

You’re sounding dangerously close to my position! If you can be happy to admit that the serpent was not actually a talking snake, then you are only a few steps off seeing the whole passage through a framework view.

The fall challenge is interesting. Adam is representative of ‘the first humans’, Federally, who may have been spread out across the whole globe by then. Then the text follows Adam’s family down the generations to the promise fulfilled in Jesus.

I have no idea how it worked with Eskimo’s or American Indians or Australian Aboriginals. There was a fall, and we were all caught up in it, somehow. Isn’t that enough?

Another solution is to pack heaps of time into the ‘son of’ argument. You know the vibe, where ‘son of’ is actually ‘descendant of’, and one can try to pack a whole lot of time into Adam’s lineage as other sons and daughters go off and colonise the globe. Then the fall happens back then, with the first 2 human humans. But that sounds like special pleading to me. According to the genetics, humans didn’t emerge in Mesopotamia somewhere.

Now, back to what happened when the water dried up from the ‘land’. But that’s the problem Dannii. As kol erets is not used as ‘land’ earlier, but ‘earth’ (because the interpreters have their Cecil B. Demille glasses on) they decided to be consistent and render the word kol erets as ‘earth’ in the drying phase of the flood as well.

So check the following out, from Richard Deem’s local flood page.
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html

Planet Earth became a desert after the flood!
Another problem for the global flood interpretation is what happened to the “earth” after the flood. Read the following verses and see if you can see why the word “earth” does not refer to the entire planet:
Then it came about at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made; and he sent out a raven, and it flew here and there until the water was dried up from the earth. (Genesis 8:6-7, NASB)
After forty days Noah opened the window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. (Genesis 8:6-7, NIV)
Now it came about in the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first of the month, the water was dried up from the earth. (Genesis 8:13a, NASB)
By the first day of the first month of Noah’s six hundred and first year, the water had dried up from the earth. (Genesis 8:13a, NIV)
and in the second month, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, the earth was dry. (Genesis 8:14, NASB)
By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry. (Genesis 8:14, NIV)
If one were to interpret these verses from a global perspective, one would have to conclude that the entire earth became a desert after the flood. Obviously this interpretation is false, so the translations must be bad. In these verses, the dryness of the earth is obviously referring to the local land area and not the entire planet earth.

I’ve found the answer!

More serious replies will come later. To thesis!

Love the cartoons.

(edit) The cartoon is funny.
 

I think that the Noah story should either be grounded in a real global flood or else be ahistorical. I think it is easier to make the theology work with an ahistorical flood than a local one.

My advice, if it’s too much for you to question the timeframes evolution tells us, then just don’t even try to connect the Noah story to history. Keep it ahistorical. It will still keep a lot of its theological purpose.

Seriously? Dannii? Please tell me you’re joking.  Sorry to interject again but:
Isn’t the purpose of the flood to warn of judgment and point to salvation through the cross?  Doesn’t that really not work if the flood didn’t actually happen?  I would have thought an ahistorical flood would make a mockery of 2 Peter 3:

3First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.

Am i just being dumb and missing something?

You raise a good point Ros. I think that is a major purpose of the flood as seen from the the NT. I think in it’s original context though the main point is about the covenant and God’s re-creation.

You’re right that there’s big problems with saying there was no flood. But I think it’s the same with a local flood. But a local flood also makes a mockery of Genesis 8:20-9:17. A local flood is even worse than no flood. But neither do the NT justice.

The fall challenge is interesting. Adam is representative of ‘the first humans’, Federally, who may have been spread out across the whole globe by then.

Can you clarify what you’re saying Dave? There’s two ambiguous meanings of representative which I can think of, and they’d have significant ramifications. Do you mean that Adam is the representative is the typical example of humanity? Or do you mean that he the head and authority over humanity? It makes me think of an ambassador. An ambassador is not only an example of their country, but brings the full power of their whole people. You kill the ambassador and you declare war on the whole country. Appease the ambassador and he’ll order his country to make peace. (Now not all ambassadors today may hold that power, but work with me!)

I don’t know if I said this before, but unless you believe first few chapters of Genesis are totally ahistorical and unrelated to reality, there’s a question we must ask: what legitimates “Adam”‘s representation? Both humanity and God must approve of humanity’s representative, so on what grounds do they take that role?