A Study Bible to End All Study Bibles

God’s salvation is commensurate with creation; that is, God’s salvation has been operative in space/time for the duration of the creation. In this way, the decision of salvation was not something that happened at a point in time, but is rather the modus operandi of God’s creative decisions to begin with. That God creates is the revelation of God’s desire to exist in relationship to that which God has created.

KJV is my weapon of choice…hate when the newer versions keep telling me what verses are not supposed to be in my bible. I’ve got the Reformation bible in the ESV by the way.

Yes, I agree that you should be able to choose which verses you want in there. 🙂

This is gonna sound suprlapsarianistic but I would suppose before the world began( before time)

“And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Rev. 13:8

I would agree that one must understand the salvation of God as transcending the linearality of space/time while concomitantly enfolding it.

(assuming you are an Darwinian evolutionist)

I’m not really “anything.” While I suggest that biological evolution is a meaningful framework through which to process and understand the overwhelming preponderance of phenomenological evidence of the processes and mechanisms of the universe, I am also not naive enough to believe that the current understandings of evolutionary biology will be intact (at least not in their present forms) in the future.

What I’m saying is, about how far up the evolutionary tree do you reckon God began saving hominids?

As I said before, I understand God’s salvation to be present throughout the fabric of space-time, intersecting and enfolding all times and places in the cosmos to the unlimited beneficence and reconciling love of God. Therefore, I would not really point to a specific place at which the salvation of God “started”–as I mentioned above, for God to create is for God’s salvation to be present, for the act of creation indicates a desire on God’s behalf to exist in relationship with that which God creates.

Could “Lucy” have been a Christian?

Lucy does not have mental faculties to affirm the tenants of Christian belief that would make her a Christian (explain the Trinity and hypostatic union to a chimpanzee). Nonetheless, does this mean that Lucy is outside of God’s salvation? Hardly.

I have never come across this study Bible and perhaps it is ridiculous.

Yes.

However, Creationism is biblical, and is essential to right Christian belief and salvation.

Essential? Really? Historical theology would not agree with you, and there have been no ecumenical councils or creeds to substantiate your claim. Upon what basis could you possibly prove this thesis, other than upon the authority of your own philosophical prejudices?

Moreover, I would ask, which version of “creationism?” Would you affirm a creationism like Hugh Ross’ that allows for billions of years of stellar evolution to account for the obviously ancient age of the universe? Or how about the less theological Intelligent Design? If you are going to make this a matter of salvific importance, it must be very clearly defined. I do not think you will find a consensus on this one, even among those who are sympathetic to your assumptions.

I too am intrested in when God implemented his plan of salvation?

As I have mentioned above, for God to create indicates that God desires to exist in relationship with that which God creates. Therefore, there is a very meaningful sense in which for God to create IS for God to save.

Lucy lacked the capacity to understand, really? Did she leave behind some writings or something? How can we know for sure that Lucy did not possess the capacity to understand the othrodox tenets of the faith? Perhaps Adam and Eve were really just two tribes of Australopithecines turned evil by eating rotten bananas?

You are right. I don’t know Lucy’s capacity for comprehension. But that does not materially change my position, for reconciliation with God is not based on one’s ability to comprehend the infinity and eternality of the Godhead.

Exist, you and Deviant Monk seem to make some authoritative statements. As the statement that redemption is not just for humanity. But my question is, if scripture is clear that we are to repent and believe to be saved, then would that not leave out all other forms of life? I have not yet heard the conversion story of a fish.

The call to repentance for humans is necessary because it is humans, not fish, who live at enmity with God. In this sense, a fish does not need to be “converted” from a live of rebellion against God, to one of reconciliation.

Nonetheless, this does not mean that fish, plants, amoeba, etc. do not participate within the redemption of the cosmos. The images in Revelation of a “new Heaven and new earth” seem to indicate that all of creation, not merely human persons, will partake of the restoration and reconciliation of the creation to God.

Where do you guys get your authoritative statements.

What I have proposed comes from my reflections upon Scripture and the nature of God that I find revealed therein.

Really, what historical theology are you talking about?

For example, I would point to Augustine’s thoughts that I discussed here. Obviously, from Augustine’s point of view, the affirmation of God’s creative power and act, not the mechanism of the same, is what is of vital importance. Speculations about the mechanisms, according to Augustine, will shift with every philosophical movement in the course of human history.

Perhaps there have been no ecuminical councils to meet on this one, because it was not needed.

I agree. It was not needed because the ancients did not see a reason to explicitly define the mechanism of that which cannot be categorically established upon phenomenological investigation.

You never had anybody trying to teach evolution and to bride it with Christianity.

Yes, because modern conceptions of evolutionary frameworks were not known at that time.

The evolution theory was formulated to oppose Christianity.

Oh please. I would love to see you substantiate that historically. Initially, most Christians were approving of the beginning conclusions of evolutionary theory and (rightly) did not see it as a threat to religious belief. In the West, it was the Fundamentalism of the early 20th century that radically shifted the mentality concerning the theological implications of the conclusions of evolutionary biology, manufacturing the false dichotomy between the implications of evolutionary theory for discussions of the phenomenological world and speculations concerning the supernatural. Therefore, this claim that you are making is actually the result of a philosophically untenable application of modern scientific principles on the part of Christians and other theists to discussions of the relationship of the supernatural and creation.

Perhaps Genesis 1 would clear things up for you. God created (two words in Hebrew) meaning self-create. Not evolve.

I do not understand how the conclusions of evolutionary biology are opposed to the ex-nihilo creation of God. Evolutionary biology, after all, does not say that life arose from nothingness. Rather, it is merely a framework for describing the changes and mutations which have been observed to occur across billions of years in biological life on Earth. There is nothing that is native to evolutionary theory, then, that precludes the ex nihilo creation by God. Rather, the dichotomy is imported by antagonists of evolutionary theory.

He created it, instantaneously. It is too clear in scripture to believe otherwise under the authority of Scripture.

But what does “instantaneously” mean in the economy of God? As God transcends space/time, durations within the created order are of equal value in eternity. Moreover, even if one is literal in the sense that you interpret Genesis, creation was not “instananeous,” but occurred over several days. I’m not saying that evolutionary biology is encoded into the pages of Scripture, but given that there are durations of time involved, I also do not see that it is categorically prohibited as an interpretation. Not to mention that the ancients who wrote these passages probably did not have this debate in mind whatsoever…

Exist…humor me by answering this question simply, with as little philisophical mess as possible. Do you believe in absolute truth or do you believe that all truth claims are of equal value?

Forgive me for what will most likely be understood as another philosophical mess, but I don’t really see the two “options” as being meaningfully different. After all, in order to determine that “all truth claims are of equal value” would seem to require that one have in mind some absolute criterion by which to adjudicate the equality of their approximation of truth.

That being said, I simply do not think that the category of “absolute truth”, as conceived by Western, Enlightenment thinking, is a very helpful paradigm for thinking about God. In my understanding, the assertion of propositions as “absolute truth”–when the asserters are themselves subjectively mired in the vagrancies of human existence within space/time–is far too often used to bolster ultimately unprovable biases.

While I say this, I would not say that one assertion is equivalent with all others. Obviously, from the loyalties which I have to the Christian faith, the assertions of historic Christian belief is compelling to me, even though it is not to others outside the Church (and not even to some within it…). I think, however, that this compulsion to belief should be rooted in a true faith, not in propositional statements about absolute truth, a truth that is ultimately unfathomable by human epistemology.

How can I know for certain that anything modern scientists claim is true?

Ultimately, you cannot, nor do I suggest that you should look to science for truth. Such a perspective has led to the mess against which I have written so pointedly, for although many creationists reveal a particular disdain for the conclusions of scientific methodology, they also do not blink an eye at utilizing its categories to establish (or at least try to) their own positions. All I am advocating is that the false and fabricated bifurcation that has been erected between current scientific methodologies and religious belief should be removed.

Perhaps it is due to my lack of education, but I have not personally seen any of the purported evidence of evolution with my own two eyes. Therefore, cannot know if one iota of what they profess is true.

As I mentioned earlier, the evidence for evolution is a matter of deduction. The evolutionary theories are not truth claims, but rather frameworks through which to understand the large and disparate data that exists.

Quite often, when something new is discovered (i.e. the latest info from the Hinode’s Solar Optical Telescope) , scientists have to go back and rewrite their theories because what they thought they knew turned out to be wrong.

Yes, and so it should be. As I noted earlier, this is why evolutionary theory is not a “guess” about how things happened, but rather an interpretive lens through which to organize and categorize the information. As knowledge increases and the data is more thoroughly understood, so will the theoretical frameworks change.

To me, basing ones views of Creation off of anything these people claim is to place oneself on a foundation of shifting sand.

This is only true if one is seeking unchanging, irrefutable truth and proof. Science cannot provide this, nor does it claim to. Interestingly, though, creationism cannot provide this too, for it fails upon the same criterion by which you would discount the contributions of evolutionary theory to understanding the biological development of life on earth.

It’s plain to me that what is now called “science” is really more like wild eyed science fiction. Even “Lucy” whom we’ve written about above, was simply a partial skeleton found in the dirt in Ethiopia, there was no book found beside it recording it’s ancestory, mating habits, or line of decendants. In reality, it proves nothing, except that, at one time the critter Existed and then Dissolved.

Well, existed and dissolved a long time ago…As to science being “wild-eyed science fiction,” your probably right. However, most science fiction of the past is the reality of toady. The microwave would have probably been anathematized two centuries ago.

In his book, “Now That’s a Good Question,” Dr. R.C. Sproul states: “The view of evolution -the one I hear discussed publically so often in the secular world- is unmitigated nonsense and will be totally rejected by the secular scientific community within the next generation.”

That may be so. However, this will bring you no closer to substantiating–on the basis of scientific methodology–a mechanistic, phenomenologically verifiable creationism.

Sproul continues, “My objections to it are not so much theological as they are rational and logical. I men, the doctrine of macroevolution is one of the most unsubstantiated myths that I’ve ever seen perpetuated in an academic environment.”

His objections ARE clearly theological, as a thorough investigation of the arguments presented on all sides would at least temper his unbelievably juvenile rhetoric.

If I cannot read Genesis and believe the account of Creation found there is what actually occured, how then can I believe anything else in the book is what actually occured?

The first thing that comes to mind is that there is a wide variety of literature in the Scriptures. To constrain every seemingly historical account to the rigors of modernistic assumptions about historicity is, frankly, dangerous. If one reads the wider collection of Ancient Near Eastern literature, it becomes clear that mythos was a extremely important element of cultural/social/religious development. But the rub is that the place of mythos had a vital and understood role within these cultures–therefore, often the mythos had more meaning to the people encountering it than did that which we would classify as “historical.” Of course, this perfectly illustrates the primal difficulty of interpretation. The interpreter cannot help but bring her assumptions about reality to bear upon the text. However, when the contexts of the interpreter and writer are separated by eons, the task becomes extremely difficult and, IMO, severely limits the claims of absolutism to which one can press the text (and subsequent interpretation).

Therefore, I personally do not see the problem with allowing a portion of the texts to be mythological. After all, if this was the writer’s intention, and not some curiously modern account of the mechanism and processes of creation that conforms to modernistic conceptions of historicity…well, we’ve done the text no violence, and only perpetrate violence upon it when we attempt to make it say what our Western conceptions of reality want it to say.

Could it be that the entire book is just one big fairy tale as my father taught me??

If you’re looking for absolute truth in Scripture that is verifiable upon the basis of modern conceptions of historicity, textual accuracy, etc., I think you will search in vain. However, the Scriptures have been central to the historic Church not because of their conformity to these criterion, but rather because they contain within their pages the unique witness of the people of God to the miraculous history of God’s salvation in creation.

His rejection of the existence God and the Bible was based upon the “problem of evil” and his objections to the Biblical account of Creation and the origin of life on the Earth.

(btw, My father died 19 years ago today…)

I am sorry for your father’s passing.

The first five books of the Bible, the pentateuch, are historical documents.

That may very well be. However, my question is not whether the events are “historical,” but what “history” meant to its authors. You and I, trained in Western understandings of “history,” have very specific ideas about history and the criteria by which one might determine that something is “historical.” This criteria further informs our understanding about the value of history to such an extent that the common assumption is that only that which can be determined to attain “historicity” by modern epistemological standards equates to meaningfulness. The effects of this are obvious, particularly within historical criticism. Mythology has taken on a very pejorative meaning. What I see as particularly troubling is that many Christian lines of thinking have completely capitulated to this defintion of “historicity.” They agree completely with modern historical/textual criticism’s criterion of historical meaning, and only diverge from the same in that they assert contrary conclusions.

So we come back to my beginning question. How do we know that the ancients shared similar presuppositions about the nature and meaning of “history?” If they did, then our interpretations and evaluations of their writings will be approximately accurate. If, however, they did not share these same presuppositions, we then do incredible violence to the text by making it conform to our biases concerning the nature and meaning of history. As I mentioned earlier, what if the writers were using mythos deliberately to communicate certain theological/religious/social meanings? Why would that not be acceptable? If we deny the possibility of this on the basis of nothing more than our particular assumptions about historicity, we have subsequently eroded any possible approximation of meaning in the act of interpretation.

They record a historical creation where God spoke things into existence. It records a historical and literal fall when Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. While there are different genres of literature, it is a vain attempt to call the pentateuch “mythological”

I hardly see how the recognition of mythos in the pentateuch is any more of a vain activity than attempting to constrain the meaning of the ancient texts to modern presuppositions about the nature and meaning of the “historical.” The primal question, then, is what one means by “historical.” Are you not importing philosophical biases to the text to make this determination? Are you not relying upon the criterion of the very methodologies against which you make your assertions?

What parts are mythological. Is “Adam” mythological?

I would see that as a possibility, yes. Adam, meaning “human,” was used (IMO) by the writers of the Pentateuch as a type of humanity, a particularizing of the general.

If so, then Jesus Christ is mythological because of the connection in Romans of Adam and Christ.

I do not see why this would be a necessary conclusion. To make such a conclusion, one would have to assume that Genesis and Romans were written under the umbrella of identical philosophical presuppositions and for the exact same purposes. I would suggest that the literary and contextual differences of each text would seem to suggest otherwise. Besides, Paul uses both Adam and Christ in very cosmis, transhistorical ways. I do not see that he is giving a thesis on the historical verifiability and actuality of Adam. Rather, in keeping with my previous comments about Adam, Paul uses each as juxtaposed types for the story of the history of salvation, showing how the reconciliation of God has been made manifest in a humanity that has rebelled against God.

I don’t know why you are so opposed to accepting the literal historical interpretation of Genesis 1.

I’m actually not opposed to “literal” interepretation of Genesis, only uncritical assumptions that the “literal” interpretation of Genesis conforms exactly with Western presuppositions concerning historicity. In this way, a literal interpretation of Gensis could be just as accurately subsumed under the suggestions that I have made concerning mythos. That is, a “literal” interpretation is that which conforms to the author’s intentions, not to the readers’.

Maybe you can share a bit ofyour background with me to help me understand where you are coming from. Maybe there is something about you altogether than I am missing here.

My background is very similar to yours, philosophically. I would have probably anathematized myself 10 years ago. However, through my studies of philosophy, historical theology, and the Scriptures, I have come to realize the powerful hold which presuppositions have on a person, from their worldview to their interpretation of Scripture. While I do not suggest that I am now “free” of these, I feel that I am more capable of self-critique than I was previously.

But nonetheless, no matter what are backgrounds are, the scriptures were written without any regard as to our backgrounds, philosophies, etc.

I completely agree. This is precisely why I suggest that we should not allow our assumptions about “historicity” unduly constrain the interpretation of the Scriptures. Our assumptions are not those of the writers of Scripture, as much as we wish they were. Therefore, the task of the interpreter is to very self-critically examine how her interpretation might be influenced by these personally-held presuppositions. Obviously, you understand that I do not think that an interpretation can ever be free of this; nonetheless, there is no reason that one should not be completely forthright about this, allowing it to temper one’s assertions about particular interpretations.

The men who penned the words of Holy Writ under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit intended a specific meaning in a specific context to a specific people. Yes, we are far removed from their context, which does make interpretation seemingly difficult. However, we do have tools to study their historical context, literature genre, grammatical structure, to understand what is being said and why it is being said.

I don’t deny that approximations of meaning can be garnered. However, I find it interesting that–especially in regards to the creationism debate–the “specific meaning” that is taken from the text nicely corresponds to the Western assumptions concerning historicity and scientific instrumentality which the interpreters assert. Perhaps the writers of Scripture were ancient Westerners, agreeing entirely that the value of history resides only in that which can be substantively proven through scientific methodology. On the other hand, maybe they had completely different valuations of the historical. The latter is my operative assumption.

The reason I am so narrow minded is because I see stuff so clear in scripture.

I don’t doubt that you do. Interpretations have a way of being self-justifying to one’s philosophical presuppositions. Believe me, I do it all the time.

There are things that I am not dogmatic on, because there are things that are difficult to build a concise theology on, for example all the details of eschatology. I dogmatically affirm Jesus is returning again bodily, but other than that…theres alot of possibilities.

But take John 14:6 or Acts 4:12….it is so clear in scripture that only through Christ can a man be saved. I claim that as absolute truth because I believe the Bible is the authoritative word of God, and those are clear explicit statements that cannot be interpreted any other way.

Yet they can. I would agree completely that it is only through Christ that all are saved. However, I would disagree–based primarily upon the example of Abraham–that this does not necessarily equate to epistemological understanding concerning Christ. So while I agree that there is an exclusivity to Christ as the only “way” of salvation, I would certainly agree as to the mechanism (horrible word choice here) of it.

Exist, How then would you answer an Atheist, such as my late father, who
believed Christianity was a hoax and for weak-minded people?Why should
a non-believer believe anything in the BIble??

If an athiest wishes to demand some sort of “proof” for faith, I will gladly acknowledge that I can provide none. I don’t have objective, demonstratable proof for my faith, and to be quite honest I would be quite disturbed if I felt that I did. Athiests who want “proof” are not really interested in that at all. Rather, they realize that if they can get “proof” from those they criticize, well, they have won the argument for they have convinced the other to play by their philosophical rules.

As to why a non-believer should believe anything in the bible, I’m wouldn’t try to convince them that they should on the basis of some contrived set of so-called objective criterion. Faith is a crisis of being, for it propels us beyond that which is within the realm of observation, measurement and manipulation, compelling us to absolute trust in God, not in our abilities to demonstrate a manufactured need to validate the Scriptures. The Scriptures are not meaingful to Christian faith because they can be proven to be “accurate” or repositories of “absolute truth.” Rather, they are invaluable because they contain the profession of the saints to the self-revelation of God in the person of Christ in the midst of God’s people. In this sense, they are meaningless to the non-believer, so I see no need to provide artificial reasons to try to make them believe it or, on the flip-side, to defend them against their ignorance of the proper place of Scriptures in the life of the Church.

Ironically, I would propose that if more Christians stopped “defending” the Scriptures, more unbelievers would be interested in them, for it would remove the motivations of many to try to undermine the methodological assumptions of the Scriptures ardent “defenders” so-called.