Thanks again for the comment. I appreciate it.
However, I have to say, you've unfortunately not given me a whole lot to work with here as far as an argument for why Genesis (or at least Genesis 1-3) should not be considered historical narrative. Or the alternate argument that it should be considered allegory. So I can't really respond simply because there's not much to respond to or work with.
But I can still make a couple of points:
I can't but shrug and wonder why Kurt Wise thinks Genesis is *monolithic*, and should be considered homogeneously historical or allegorical right across its face. Surely he, and you are familiar with any number of textual analysis of Genesis that divide up the book into much smaller chunks, each of which have different dispositions as to their expressive form.
Dr. Wise doesn't argue for an across the boards "monolithic" or "homogenous" reading of Genesis. His argument is much more nuanced.
Many exegetes carve of Gen 1-11 as being primarily allegorical, then pivoting from there forward into a more historical mode. Others slice the allegory at Gen 3, identifying the genealogies as being perfectly historical, and then returning to a more allegorical mode in Genesis 6.
What would you do? More importantly, how would you support the contention that Genesis 1-3 or Genesis 1-11 should be primarily allegorical rather than primarily historical narrative -- particularly in light of Dr. Wise's argument?
Isn't Wise's working assumption that Genesis is a monolith in this regard a patently simplistic, if not deceptive approach. I suggest that the assumption that Genesis be all of one or all of the other, or even *primarily* one or the other isn't warranted.
Again, Wise doesn't assume that "Genesis is a monolith" or that "Genesis [is] all of one or all of the other." For instance, he makes mention of subgenres like poetry within the primarily historical narrative of Genesis.
You're right, though, Wise does argue Genesis should primarily be read as historical narrative. But I don't see why this is a problem. I don't see why one can't primarily categorize a book of the Bible like Genesis underneath a particular genre. In fact, that's precisely what Biblical scholars, professors of literature, and others do. While it's true that all parts of a book of the Bible need not fit underneath a single genre, I don't see why there's anyhing wrong with classifying a book of the Bible primarily underneath a single genre.
For example, Leviticus is primarily a legal source. Proverbs would fit under wisdom literature. Psalms is primarily poetry. Daniel and Revelation might primarily fit under apocalyptic or prophetic literature. I think you'd also agree books like 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles would generally be considered historical narrative. Paul's letters to the various churches are obviously epistolary.
Why is the argument that Genesis is primarily historical narrative unwarranted?
Now, please correct me if I'm wrong, but based on the above it seems as though you're in favor of an allegorical interpretation of Genesis 3. Yet in a previous comment, when I asked:
Speaking of which, I'm curious, how would you as a theistic evolutionist respond to the existence of disease and death prior to man if we assume evolution is true?
That is, according to evolutionary theory, uni and multicellular organisms (prokaryotes and eukaryotes) such as bacteria, and others such as virii, were present well before the advent of man. Decomposition took place when organisms died. Presumably bacteria, for example, helped along in the process of animal decomposition after death. It makes sense to say that (early) man would have also decomposed after death. Or at least fallen prey to disease even if he was able to eventually fight it off through a developed immune system. But probably many died from disease.
Thus early to modern man would have evolved in an environment which included things like the existence of processes like decomposition, would have been susceptible and in fact exposed to disease, and would very likely have died. Even from his earliest days, in fact even from his transitional phase between ape-man to early man, man would've been living in these conditions. Illness and disease existed and thus would've been trasmitted to him. His body would begin to gradually die as he approached old age. Death would inevitably claim him. His body would decompose. And so on.
Yet Genesis indicates that man did not suffer the effects of physical death until after the Fall. Man's own body did not decay and eventually die in the Garden of Eden. What's more, he appears to have been living in an environment in which none of these processes which lead to death were in effect. Man's environment seems to have been perfect and free of those things which would cause death. Romans 8:20-22 elaborates: "For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." This "pains of childbirth" would seem (at least in part) to refer to the Fall in Genesis 3.
At any rate, Romans 8 indicates that creation itself is in "bondage to decay." In other words, according to the Bible decay and death do not seem to be a natural state of affairs. But according to the theory of evolution decay and death would be perfectly natural. In fact, they would even be prerequisites to the entire process of evolution and human evolution. Without decay and death, how could any organism evolve in the first place? Without decay and death, how could animals prey on one another? Without decay and death, how would natural selection and survival function? Etc.
So my question is, how would you make sense of the Biblical narrative in places like Genesis 3 and Romans 8 in light of evolution?
You responded with the following:
Patrick, I'm just taking the last paragraph here of this section of yours which I understand to be related to the same question. In Genesis, there is a "Tree of Life". The name it's given should suggest to you the answer I will give. Man could partake of the "Tree of Life" in Eden, and it is this that provided ongoing vitality -- immortality so long as the Tree of Life was available to him. When Adam sinned, God sent him out of the Garden of Eden and away from the Tree of Life - the life sustaining resource for him. As a consequence of Adam's sin, this life-preserving resoure was withdrawn, and Adam was forced to go without, and to die a physical death one day, as is appointed to each of us who came after.
My question now is, wouldn't this indicate that you believe in a literal tree of life? If so, then why would you interpret the rest of Genesis 3 allegorically?
To be honest, at this point it seems to me like you're picking and choosing when to allegorize and when not to based on whether it fits with the theory of evolution. The common denominator in your Biblical interpretation seems to be the theory of evolution; the Biblical text is thus rendered malleable to the theory of evolution while the theory of evolution is a fixed, unchangeable constant. But as a professing Christian shouldn't it be the reverse? Shouldn't the Bible be the final arbiter of truth?
Thanks again.
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteYou're right, there's a whole lot more to say on this subject than I did -- I've been through threads with hundreds of posts on this subject in past years. I'll leave this as a marker to say: good post! and that I should be able to give this a good treatment tonight, but late.
I don't have time just now to go into detail, but I will say that I *do* see Genesis 1-3 as primarily allegorical. Other parts of Genesis I identify as wholly historical. And those aren't the only choices.
If so, I maintain that Wise has no reason to say that Genesis should be primarily one way or the other. That's a very crude way to classify Genesis. I'm happy to look at which parts present themselves as historical, and how emphatically, and other parts as allegorical and how emphatically. But the premise Wise brings up here is erroneous on its face. Genesis might be a complicated mosaic, contain a heterogeneous mixture of forms and modes. If so, it's a first order goof to demand that Genesis be primarily viewed as one type or another.
It's important too, because that mistake is what leads so many YECs off the rails; They are told Genesis is historical, which it is in part, but they aren't told "the part", and thus hold the book to be historical narrative through and through.
The text doesn't present itself that way. It's much more nuanced than that.
More later, thanks.
-Touchstone
Hi Touchstone. I'd appreciate it if you could also please (at a minimum) interact with Dr. Wise's argument in your forthcoming response? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI don't have time just now to go into detail, but I will say that I *do* see as primarily allegorical.
ReplyDeleteA. As has been pointed out to you, and which you seem to continue to ignore, allegory is a specific literary form as well as an interpretive method in which A represents B. It is not simple typology. Where is the interpreter? The storyteller? The interpretation of the symbols? The markers that would tell the reader that the material is symbolic? What, in short, is the literary form in Hebrew allegory? Where are those components located in this text?
Your "interpretation" is that Adam is a real person. If that is so, then this is not an allegorical form, rather, you are picking and choosing what is allegorical and what is not within the one form. What, therefore, is your criterion, with supporting arguments, for these distinctions? It seems to me that your escape clause is the phrase "primarily" allegorical. That is, some is and some is not. What is the warrant for the two different forms?
B. Apropos A, any "interpretation" that you bring here that denies the temple imagery and the covenantal language and calls this "allegorical" is out of synch with the exegesis of the text. Meredith Kline, if my memory serves is an OEC and his exegesis reflects that. He does not, however, resort into "allegorical" exegesis. There is symbolic language here because there is typological language here. Typology and allegory are not convertible concepts.
C. So, my challenge to you is actually exegete the text and provide something of substance. This will need to include some demonstration of the lexicography of the language itself and the literature forms.
D. Likewise, the point of the Genesis narrative is to ground the history of Israel as she enters the land. It's about having a covenantal right to the land of Canaan. The point of the text is that the Israelites have a covenatal right to the land, going back to Adam in the Garden. Why accept the former and not the latter connection?
E. There other theological considerations for which you must account. (A) the Covenant of Works fulfilled by Jesus was real, so why is the Genesis covenant "allegorical?" If the Covenant of Works is allegorical then so is the Covenant of Grace. This will undermine biblical soteriology. (B) Regeneration is monergistic and a one time event. It turns on the same principle as creation ex nihilo, so your interpretation will need to account for these theological parallels as well. Your view on creation selects not for divine monergism but for regenerative synergism. (C) The text of is not to be read in isolation. It is to be read in parallel with the construction of the ark and the construction of the Tabernacle. The final product was a real, literal object constructed in a particular place and time; why is this otherwise for the others? I'll give you some hints here, because if one of your objections to the days of creation relates to the stars and heavens on day four, you'll find yourself looking stupid, for God is, on Day 4 merely "placing windows" in the firmament of Day 2, the way he puts windows in the ark, the way there is heavenly imagery in the Tabernacle through its lighting.
Ah, doesn't this mean that the text of Genesis 1-3 is "allegorical?" No, it means it is typological and its images are repeated several times in concrete objects. There is a correspondence between those objects as they show up in Scripture; typology and allegory are by no means the same thing. Adam is a type of Christ. Both are real persons and all of us are Adam's direct descendents and not the descendents of others, or you are without hope and dead in your sins.
There is a table of nations. You mentioned Genesis 11 . That same table shows up again in Acts 2. God calls together the same nations at Pentecost whose ancestors were scattered at Babel. The text assumes that both are literal events. This is all to say that your claims the text should be interpreted ahistorically is, itself, an ahistorical claim. You can cut it off @ Genesis 3 or Genesis 11 , but you need an exegetical warrant for doing this. What is that warrant?
F. When you say things like this:
rely he, and you are familiar with any number of textual analysis of Genesis that divide up the book into much smaller chunks, each of which have different dispositions as to their expressive form.
Oh, like inserting a false disjunction between and ? You're borrowing from good old fashioned higher critical theory...but only lazy exegetes opt for this these days. ANE scholarship has long ago abandoned the documentary hypothesis and its corrollaries. For somebody that touts his scientific knowledge, you strike me as monumentally ignorant of bibical criticism. You'll need supporting arguments for higher criticism too.
Genesis lacks many characteristics of non-historical Hebrew literature. Characteristics common in Hebrew allegory, such as storytellers, interpreters, interpretations, and a non-physical-world focus are absent from the Genesis text. Most of the terms of the text (like birds, plants, stars) do not seem to be symbolic. The characteristics of Hebrew poetry with its parallelism of juxtaposed couplets and metrical balance are also absent from most of the text.
ReplyDeleteI think Wise is forgetting some of the major “terms of the text”; We have a “tree of knowledge of good and evil”. We have a “tree of life”. Both are cosmic in their scope and supernatural powers, which is unusual for an historical account of a tree. And of course, we have a talking snake. In Numbers 22 we also have a talking animal, Balaam’s ass. But by verse 31 we have the angel of the LORD standing over Balaam, with sword in hand, and Balaam trembling, prostrate before him. Clearly to Balaam, and to us by the text, this was a miraculous intervention in animating the ass to rebuke Balaam. In the Genesis 3 account, Eve gives no indication of surprise to find herself being addressed by a snake. She is not laid prostrate by the angel of the LORD, we do not see a historical resolution testifying to extraordinary nature of the snake that talked.
Way at the other end of the Bible, we find the red dragon speaking blaspheming the name of God (Rev 12). This is a dragon with seven heads and ten horns. I think it’s the rare exegete that considers Revelation historical narrative, so here again is another symbolic utilization of an animal speaking. Is it a historical account? Not in the sense Wise is using it, I suggest. Is it perfectly *true*? I believe it is. These are mythic elements, the talking serpent, the trees with supernatural capabilities. They are perfectly true in that convey a real history – the fall of man from the commission of sin. But the device used is figurative, and symbolic. If you were to pick up a text that you were told was “true”, but contained the account of trees with supernatural, cosmic powers, and a talking serpent along with a pair of humans, would you suppose that the truth was *scientific* in its telling, or moral/figurative?
Also, Genesis is the “bootstrapping book”, the book that kicks of the written tradition, distilling what were previously oral narratives. While we can identify a lot of concrete history within it, but it’s manifestly *unlike* in its structure. If one is determined, fixed in a post-enlightenment reductionist frame, that Genesis must be completely historical-scientific, then one will simply see it all thus; There *is* no allegorical language that cannot be viewed as an historical account reified by an omnipotent God, if that is what is one is determined to do. All allegory capitulates to the powers of an omnipotent God. Could the red dragon be a red dragon in Rev 12? Could be, God could certainly ordain it thus. Is that the natural way to read Rev. 12? I don’t think so.
Genesis does have many of the characteristics common in Hebrew historical narrative. It contains genealogical lists, for example, as well as narrative with interspersed poetic lines, an emphasis on definitions, frequent use of the direct object sign and relative pronoun, a list of sequential events separated by the special Hebrew phrase called a waw consecutive (waw is pronounced vahv and is usually translated "and" as in "And God said..." or "And the earth was..."), plus an abundance of geographic, cultural, and other verifiable details. Included are a number of other features that in Western literature may indicate non-historical, even poetic narrative (such as numerology, figures of speech, textual symmetry, and phenomenological language) but that are commonly found in Hebrew historical narrative.
Some parts of Genesis are decidedly historical. No doubt about it. I think this only represents a problem if one presumes that Genesis cannot and does not have historical and allegorical vectors. Does Wise identify Genesis as similar in form to other, competing cosmogonies of that time? Would he find similarities for the book of Nehemiah in Babylonian mythology as exist between Genesis and Enuma Elish, or the Gilgamesh epic? Those are manifestly mythic texts, and I can’t see that Wise would be unfamiliar with those comparisons. Would he characterize Gilgamesh as an historical account in form, if false in its actual historicity? I’m not setting up either the Enuma Elish or Gilgamesh as truths or peers to Genesis theologically, but one must purposely ignore them to omit them from comparisons to the literary style of Genesis.
The historical texts in Genesis contrast with non-historical narrative. For the most part, seamless connections join the various Genesis accounts, including those widely accepted as historical. But the short, non-historical passages within the Genesis account -- for example, Adam's response at seeing Eve (Gen. 2:23) and the song of Lamech (Gen. 4:23-24) -- as well as poetic renditions of Genesis passages found in other places in Scripture (such as in Ps. 104) contrast sharply with the historical flavor of the Genesis text, including the creation account.
This is Wise identifying for himself the historical flavor of Genesis text, “including the creation account”. This assumes its own conclusion. If everything else has a historical flavor but the parts he wants to except, well then it’s just historical by the definition of Kurt Wise. But he’s conspicuously omitting that the language of days is used in Gen. 1 prior to the creation of the earth – the object that anchors the idea of a ‘day’ (sunrise, sunset). Does that have a “historical flavor”? If one interprets the two creation accounts literally, they disagree in detail and sequence. Does Wise find this to be also demonstrative of historical flavor? These problems and more confound the man bent on rigid historical scientific readings of Genesis, but give way if they are simply regarded as perfectly true but *cosmogonic* in expression. The narrative has a strong compelling logic, but one that is cosmological and theological, not chronological or geological. So if Wise can read this as having “historical” flavor (Gen 1-3), I’d simply wonder how many historical complications he would have to identify before he might suppose he was approaching the text in a way it was never intended to be approached. An ancient Israelite learning the Pentateuch doesn’t have to be a scientific genius to understand the idea of days as sunrise/sunset cycles. When he reads that on the “first day”, with no earth or sun yet in the picture, the very things that came to define what a “day” was, there’s no need to appeal to some scientific knowledge base to understand that it doesn’t make sense in the literal reading. It was simply not an issue for him, he didn’t bring the burden of a commitment to identification of scientific mechanisms and chronologies that Wise apparently does here. Wise is projecting an anachronistic “worldview” onto the ancients, a perspective they would be mystified by. And probably amused by as well, I’d wager.
Scripture itself refers to Genesis as historical. The remainder of Scripture (Exod. 20:11; Neh. 9:6; Acts 17:22-29) and Jesus Himself (Matt. 19:4-6) speak of Genesis -- including the creation account -- as if it were to be taken as history. Likewise, most of the Jews and Christians through time have understood the Genesis account to be historical. Since the Genesis account is historical narrative and reliable, its clear claim of a six-day creation should be taken seriously.
It is historical in a very real sense. God create the heavens and the earth. The allegorical elements in Genesis don’t change the fact that God did in fact create all there is, that Adam sinned and caused the Fall. There is no clear claim of six solar days in Genesis 1 – anyone aware of ‘day-age’ exegesis is familiar with that treatment. And it’s not something invented by Darwinists. Does Wise suppose Augustine and Origen were trying to serve the evolutionary agenda in their exegeses? I’m happy to respond to items you request, but it’s a telling sign when I see Wise beg the question like this --- the clear claim of six day creation. If Wise isn’t aware of day-age exegeses.
OK, those are my “engagements” of Wise. Another YEC who assumes his consequent.
-Touchstone
A. As has been pointed out to you, and which you seem to continue to ignore, allegory is a specific literary form as well as an interpretive method in which A represents B. It is not simple typology. Where is the interpreter? The storyteller? The interpretation of the symbols? The markers that would tell the reader that the material is symbolic? What, in short, is the literary form in Hebrew allegory? Where are those components located in this text?
ReplyDeleteI don’t see allegory as strictly a literary form. It can’t be only a literary form. In Gal. 4:24 Paul tells us that Sarah/Isaac and Hagar/Ishmael must be viewed allegorically. Now, if your words here have any strength, you can go back to the accounts of Sarah & Isaac and Hagar & Ishmael and identify for me where you see the allegorical literary form. Those stories occur in manifestly *historical* form, right? If so, then where does Paul get off seeing these as allegorical? Paul see them as simultaneously historical and allegorical. But the allegory isn’t identified by the literary form, unless you can show me the literary form somewhere in Gen 17-32.
Here’s a little project for you, the text of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”
There was a Shepherd Boy who tended his sheep at the foot of a mountain near a dark forest. It was lonely for him, so he devised a plan to get a little company. He rushed down towards the village calling out "Wolf, Wolf," and the villagers came out to meet him. This pleased the boy so much that a few days after he tried the same trick, and again the villagers came to his help. Shortly after this a Wolf actually did come out from the forest. The boy cried out "Wolf, Wolf," still louder than before. But this time the villagers, who had been fooled twice before, thought the boy was again lying, and nobody came to his aid. So the Wolf made a good meal off the boy's flock.
Can you identify the allegorical literary form here? Is this an allegory in your view, or not? Does this have “historical flavor”, as Kurt Wise might say?
Your "interpretation" is that Adam is a real person. If that is so, then this is not an allegorical form, rather, you are picking and choosing what is allegorical and what is not within the one form. What, therefore, is your criterion, with supporting arguments, for these distinctions? It seems to me that your escape clause is the phrase "primarily" allegorical. That is, some is and some is not. What is the warrant for the two different forms?
I’m undecided if Adam was a real individual or not. I’m inclined to think he was, but only tentatively. And I don’t see that it matters, theologically, morally or spiritually one way or another. But either way, the delivery of the story in Genesis I identify as allegorical in nature, but that in no way precludes Adam from being a real person, with a real story of sin and transgression, just because the story is rendered allegorically. So I don’t identify the forms as necessarily either or. Paul saw Sarah/Isaac/Hagar/Ishmael as both historical and allegorical at the same time. I see Genesis as allegorical, but conveying the real story of a real person in allegorical terms. I don’t see the genealogies in Gen 4,5 as being allegorical, but historical (with gaps). So from Gen 3 to the genealogy at the end of Gen 4, Genesis abruptly pivots in its thrust. Wise wants to see it all as “primarily” one way or another. That’s a mistaken way to approach it. If something is 90% historical and 10% allegorical, we might well say it’s “primarily” historical. But even if we satisfy ourselves with that label, it doesn’t give us license to reframe the allegorical 10% as historical, just because, well, it’s primarily historical over all. The text should be honored and accepted on its own terms.
And, I’m happy to offer you my rationales for my words, but every time you ask for “supporting arguments”, you ring the Irony Bell for this blog, given your pal Steve. I’ve got no trouble providing such, but it’s a grin to see you guys demand what you won’t give.
B. Apropos A, any "interpretation" that you bring here that denies the temple imagery and the covenantal language and calls this "allegorical" is out of synch with the exegesis of the text. Meredith Kline, if my memory serves is an OEC and his exegesis reflects that. He does not, however, resort into "allegorical" exegesis. There is symbolic language here because there is typological language here. Typology and allegory are not convertible concepts.
Oh. Meredith Kline. I forgot about that. Well that settles it doesn’t? Sheesh. I might as well say Rabbi Finkelstein proved my own understanding with regards to so-and-so interpretive frameworks interspersed with spaghetti and meatballs. Come on, are you gonna be serious here or not?
Do you see Jonah in the belly of the whale as a type of Christ’s burial? If so, where do you identify the typological language in the story of Jonah? How about the serpent Moses lifted up? Is that a type? If so, what is the typological language you identify that makes it so? I’m fascinated that you apparently find typology to be something like an inflection for a lemma in the language. Like we might find “-type” or its original language equivalent tagged on to the “marker” words in the text. Typologies are established through connections between prefiguring and realization, right? If so, that’s a conceptual connection between different parts or elements of scripture.
I find strong typology in Genesis as well. Christ is the new Adam, the last Adam. The very word “Adam” means mankind. Adam refused to obey in one garden, Jesus bore that curse and obeyed in another garden (an anti-type). Isaac carries wood for his own execution, so does Jesus. Etc. So an allegorical interpretation of Adam doesn’t get in the way of whatever typology is in there. There’s no need to “convert” between one and the other. They are distinct concepts and both can be and are operating in Genesis.
C. So, my challenge to you is actually exegete the text and provide something of substance. This will need to include some demonstration of the lexicography of the language itself and the literature forms.
Your challenge, huh? Allright, well I challenge to a complete exegesis of Biblical typology and allegory! Please be detailed, with references and footnotes. Don’t forget anything, please. Please provide indisputable proof. Nothing less will do.
Oh, and your own words, only, please!
And I challenge you to do it fast!
(You’re being funny here, right? You’re welcome to ask me questions, and I’ll do my best to answer, clearly and fully, but you’re way ahead of yourself here.)
D. Likewise, the point of the Genesis narrative is to ground the history of Israel as she enters the land. It's about having a covenantal right to the land of Canaan. The point of the text is that the Israelites have a covenatal right to the land, going back to Adam in the Garden. Why accept the former and not the latter connection?
I have no problem with a covenantal right to the land of Canaan, but I do have a problem with the idea that “the point” of Genesis was simply historical preparation for the people. I see Genesis as establishing God’s sovereignty over all of creation, and the establishment of His relationship with man, and man’s fall and subsequent predicament as rising way above real estate claims on Canaan as “the point” of Genesis. That doesn’t mean God didn’t also provide for the conquest and colonization of Canaan, but I don’t hear that posited as “the point” over God’s monotheistic jurisdiction for Genesis. I suppose you can tell me that the covenant flows from that primary claim of jurisdiction, but the “root” is that God is the ruler of all, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, right?
In any case, I don’t see a dispute here with regard to Canaan.
E. There other theological considerations for which you must account. (A) the Covenant of Works fulfilled by Jesus was real, so why is the Genesis covenant "allegorical?" If the Covenant of Works is allegorical then so is the Covenant of Grace. This will undermine biblical soteriology. (B) Regeneration is monergistic and a one time event. It turns on the same principle as creation ex nihilo, so your interpretation will need to account for these theological parallels as well. Your view on creation selects not for divine monergism but for regenerative synergism. (C) The text of is not to be read in isolation. It is to be read in parallel with the construction of the ark and the construction of the Tabernacle. The final product was a real, literal object constructed in a particular place and time; why is this otherwise for the others? I'll give you some hints here, because if one of your objections to the days of creation relates to the stars and heavens on day four, you'll find yourself looking stupid, for God is, on Day 4 merely "placing windows" in the firmament of Day 2, the way he puts windows in the ark, the way there is heavenly imagery in the Tabernacle through its lighting.
I don’t understand why you are having a hard time thinking that allegorical does not negate *real*. Especially when the allegory is the expression for a historical person, or historical people. When Paul says in Romans 5 that through “one man” sin entered the world, I note that we must at *least* invoke the symbology of federal headship, as Eve was not only directly involved, but technically the point of entry, chronologically in the text. Does federal headship undermine Biblical soteriology? Of course not. It’s no less undermined if metonymic. It’s wholly monergistic. I think you simply are having trouble with the idea that allegory doesn’t mean “unreal” or “untrue”. In Genesis, the allegory is both real and binding, soteriologically. It relates historical events in allegorical modes, but those historical events are every bit as binding and real as they would be if Gen 3 was *not* allegorical.
Ah, doesn't this mean that the text of Genesis 1-3 is "allegorical?" No, it means it is typological and its images are repeated several times in concrete objects. There is a correspondence between those objects as they show up in Scripture; typology and allegory are by no means the same thing. Adam is a type of Christ. Both are real persons and all of us are Adam's direct descendents and not the descendents of others, or you are without hope and dead in your sins.
You’re forgetting about eve. *Literally*, without the symbology of federal headship, sin did not enter the world through “one man”, but through two people, with the lady making the first move. Is that a problem? Does your typology now crumble if “one man” is actually *two* people, one who is not a man? Christ is just one man, not two people, right? So your rigid demands for how the typology must match up aren’t even coherent with a *literalist* reading of the text. You must, and should, invoke the symbology of the federal headship of Adam over Eve. Symbolized thus, Adam and Christ match up as one-for-one, but only then. That’s OK, you can do that, it’s good Bible interpretation. Your brittle assumptions for the typological isomorphisms just need a little more imagination.
There is a table of nations. You mentioned Genesis 11 . That same table shows up again in Acts 2. God calls together the same nations at Pentecost whose ancestors were scattered at Babel. The text assumes that both are literal events. This is all to say that your claims the text should be interpreted ahistorically is, itself, an ahistorical claim. You can cut it off @ Genesis 3 or Genesis 11 , but you need an exegetical warrant for doing this. What is that warrant?
The text doesn’t assume anything. You, and I, and anyone else doing the interpretation are the one’s doing the assuming. I understand you are inclined to confuse your *understanding* of the text with the text itself, but let’s not lose sight of what’s really happening. I don’t claim the text should be interpreted as “ahistorical”, if that is to mean, “not historical at all”. I note the mention of the Tigris and Euphrates early on in Genesis. Those seem like verifiable landmarks, historical references. If Genesis 3 is allegorical, it doesn’t mean that the events it allegorizes didn’t happen, or didn’t happen right near the Tigris and Euphrates river. Rather, it means that the story is related in allegorical form. It’s perfectly true and real, but it’s not a scientific presentation.
As for the tower
F. When you say things like this:
rely he, and you are familiar with any number of textual analysis of Genesis that divide up the book into much smaller chunks, each of which have different dispositions as to their expressive form.
Oh, like inserting a false disjunction between and ? You're borrowing from good old fashioned higher critical theory...but only lazy exegetes opt for this these days. ANE scholarship has long ago abandoned the documentary hypothesis and its corrollaries. For somebody that touts his scientific knowledge, you strike me as monumentally ignorant of bibical criticism. You'll need supporting arguments for higher criticism too.
Well, that’s not a problem. If we were reading the Bible in a vacuum, with no real world around us, I think your demands would be more reasonable. We would probably read Isaiah telling us that the trees will clap their hands, and think that trees really *do* have hands, whatever trees are. But we don’t – I don’t – live in a vacuum, but instead in the real world God created for us. If we take the Bible seriously, we don’t maintain a “vacuum view”, a compartmentalized indulgence of some mystical version of the truth of the Bible. The Bible is real world. When Christians realize that their interpretations about the earth being the center of the universe is bogus, they ought to give way to a better interpretation of scripture that doesn’t offend God’s creation.
The YEC view is only viable as an exercise in mysticism. It’s a “flat earth” or geocentric astronomy equivalent. So my rationale for higher criticism doesn’t stem at all from a desire to diminish the truth or authority of the Bible, but rather to uphold it, because the YEC literalist view just isn’t a serious view of scripture. It scoffs at God’s Word as something that is really true in the real world. I only need to have you read Steve’s recent replies to me as powerful evidence of this. The unbelievers see YEC theology, then think about what they know about God’s creation, even not knowing or admitting who created it all, and they see YEC theology as a powerful argument that Christianity is cynical hoax, the Gospel a lie. It’s only true if you can mysticalize yourself and tie yourself in horrible philosophical meta-scientific existential knots.
So my rationale for my “higher criticism” is this: YEC theology is cyanide for the spread of the Gospel. It’s Dawkins most powerful asset. He’s got nothing, nothing close to the powerful argument he has in merely pointing reasonable, honest folk at guys like Steve, and you, from what you’ve said here.
Is that good enough? Is the fact that your brittle, anachronistic, reductionist interpretive frameworks produce absurdities, logical contradictions and cascading conundra that drive people who think *away* from Christ a good enough reason to wonder if maybe you’ve got things off a bit? If the Gospel is true in a real and immanent way, a present and vital truth in the lives of real people in the real world, then YEC interpretations are completely unworkable. If you want to be able to answer a colleagues question about “Hey whaddya think about that supernova on the news last night, almost makes me think there’s a God” with something better than mumbling about metrical conventionalism, you’re gonna need a different crystal ball than the one you’re peering through.
-Touchstone
(applause)
ReplyDeleteTouchstone, you are really putting these neanderthals in their place.
This is the most telling moment in your post above...
"So my rationale for my “higher criticism” is this: YEC theology is cyanide for the spread of the Gospel. It’s Dawkins most powerful asset. He’s got nothing, nothing close to the powerful argument he has in merely pointing reasonable, honest folk at guys like Steve, and you, from what you’ve said here."
These guys, with their dogma, their cultish 'covenant' pronouncements, their ad hominems, smug demeaners, and silly sola scripture commitments, absolutely create a chasm between rationality and their worldview. This drives all but other members of their cult, the easily impressionable, and people looking for a hate group to join running for the door.
touchstone....excellent.
ReplyDeletesteve....SNIZZZ!!!