Didn’t I Just Talk About This?
This video from Joel Hunter, senior pastor of Northland Church (FL), highlights the exact point I was trying to make in my previous post regarding Rabbi Barry Block’s comments on Exodus. Dr. Hunter says that it is very dangerous to attach a literal meaning to Genesis 1 since it might drive away potential converts (especially if they might be scientists).
Dr. Hunter calls us to contemplate the fuller mystery of God.
However, he does rightly recognize that if we mythologize parts of the Bible, then how are we to understand other parts of the Bible? Are they also allegory? If the creation story found in Genesis 1 is only a myth constructed by Bronze Age herdsmen who don’t have a lick of scientific sense in their bodies, then can’t the same argument also be applied to the Resurrection?
We’re pandering to culture here. And as Christians, we should be better than that! How can we be salt and light to the world if, by our beliefs and actions, we are just like the world?
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Posted on July 4, 2010, in Bible Thoughts, God, Heresy, Religion, Science, Theology and tagged Creationism, Religion. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
Josiah Concept Ministries 
“However, he does rightly recognize that if we mythologize parts of the Bible, then how are we to understand other parts of the Bible? Are they also allegory? If the creation story found in Genesis 1 is only a myth constructed by Bronze Age herdsmen who don’t have a lick of scientific sense in their bodies, then can’t the same argument also be applied to the Resurrection?”
That’s the problem. The religious have a preconceived idea that all (for some) or at least some parts (for most) of the Bible are literal truths. Maybe the mythic nature of the Creation story does put in question the truth of the rest of the Bible. The only objection to that that I hear here is that it doesn’t, a circular argument.
It’s like believing for a long time that a bar of metal with a headpiece (Resurrection) and a body (Creation story) is burning hot because it looks like it is (or one has been told that it is). And then some audacious person (héhé, Darwin and scientists studying the age of the universe, the formation of the solar system, etc) touches the body of the metal, realizes it isn’t, that it is horribly cold. Then some say: “Maybe the headpiece isn’t hot either”. And some object: “We can’t be like everyone else, we can’t simply accept that the body of the metal is cold since it may imply that the head is, and we all just KNOW that it is extremely hot.”
A myth can still have meaning!
Cory, If someone can demonstrate to you that Genesis 1 is based more on ANE flat earth ideas than a literal history of creation, you’re willing to also question the resurrection stories in the NT?
You’ll have your work cut out for you if you try that approach. I’m already aware that parallels exist, though I’m not certain how many or to what degree they are present. If you want to try, go ahead and shoot me an e-mail.
I assume you have a copy of The Christian Delusion since you said you’d be reviewing it. For such parallels you can read my chapter, “The Cosmology of the Bible,” along with endnotes that address specific arguments of some YECs who claim to have found hidden nuggets of modern scientific wisdom in a few verses in the OT. The endnotes contain plenty of sources for further reading. And there’s some excellent works online as well that I can suggest concerning further OT/ANE parallels, including discussions of the present state of studies in the rise of ANE henotheism, monolatry and finally monotheism.