As you know by now if you are
paying any attention to what is going on in our culture, Christian belief is
under attack at its most rudimentary levels. The authority of Scripture is
called into question more and more within our own ranks. The institution of
marriage has been under attack for years now. Human sexuality, that is, that
God created us male and female has been cast aside and we are witnessing some
of the most bizarre psychological disorders among us now being treated as
normal. The outright murder of babies is not only allowed, but celebrated with
great enthusiasm. Indeed, the Scriptures, the human person, the human
relationship between the sexes, and the sanctity of life, all treasures
created, ordered, and designed by God are each one being perverted on a massive
scale now. This experience is not new for all cultures, but it is new for
American culture. The war is so intense that it is now impossible to miss. The
apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church 2,000 years ago and told them: For
what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church
whom you are to judge? 13 God
judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
The purpose of this post is to
continue my interaction with the views point forward by some of the folks over
at the Faithlife (Logos Lexham) forum. The issue is related to “problems with
the traditional interpretation” of Genesis 1-11. Now, I am not implying or
inferring that these positions that I am interacting with fit the category of
heresy or that all of them are guilty of committing equally serious error.
However, there is a broader umbrella under which these positions reside that I
believe does represent a clear and present threat to Christian belief.
Hopefully, the consequences of these beliefs will become obvious as I work
through the issues.
NL observes a second problem with
the traditional understanding of Genesis 1-2 when he writes: 2) Genesis
1:6-7 tells us that the sky above is water, being held back by the hard sky
(Job
37:18, Proverbs 8:28, Genesis
7:11). If you’re going to insist that Genesis is an accurate scientific
account of the of creation… you need to engage every single verse listed above.
So, let’s take these claims one at a time. First, NL tells us that the
traditional view of Genesis 1:6-7 holds that the sky is hard, and that it is
holding back water. Is he correct? Is that how the traditional view interprets
Genesis 1:6-7? NL’s challenge is not to specific individuals or specific views,
but to what he would call an overly literal hermeneutic. Does the word rāqîaʿ
mean a solid dome? Part of this thinking holds that “three-story universe” idea
in antiquity. But as Safarti rightly points out, “The sort of abstract special/mechanical
interest involved in the idea of a three-story universe is a product of the
demythologization of Greek rationalism and Euclidian special concepts.
[Safarti, The Genesis Account, p. 152] The word rāqîaʿ is used several
times in the OT text in conjunction with God “stretching out” the heavens or
the firmament. The word then refers to not a cosmic dome, but cosmic space
[Safarti].
Second, NL cites Job 37:18 as
evidence for his conclusion: Can you, like him, spread out the skies,
hard as a cast metal mirror? First
of all, this is a figure of speech. We call it a rhetorical question.
There is nothing in the text affirming that the sky is actually a hard dome. NL
is surely reading too much into the text and he seems to want to ignore the
genre not to mention the figure of speech. What is God doing with Job? He is
educating him on the creation? He is intending to instruct Job on the physical
properties of the firmament? It seems pretty obvious that God is in the middle
of a serious rebuke of Job. Context matters. Genre matters. Figures of speech
matter.
Next, NL cites proverbs 8:28 as
evidence for his conclusions: when he made
firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains
of the deep. It is puzzling to me how anyone could take such an approach to
wisdom literature while at the same offering criticism of a hermeneutic that he
thinks is overly literal. The Hebrew bĕʾammĕṣōw us translated by NET “when he
established.” The lexical evidence would not support the idea that Solomon is
attempting to inform us that God created a hard dome in the sky above. The word
is used in the piel stem to show that what was made was made strong or
resistant. It seems to be a serious flaw in the interpretive process to see
Solomon here intending a literal “hard” object by his employment of this word.
Finally NL cites Genesis 7:11 as
proof or depending on one’s perspective, a problem: In the six hundredth year
of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on
that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of
the heavens were opened. This same expression is used in Mal. 3:10 where God
promises to open the windows of heaven and pour out blessings. It is used in
Isaiah 24:18 describe the outpouring of divine wrath. It seems best to
understand the expression as an idiom, much like our own idioms. For example,
this morning it was raining cats and dogs just before the sun rose.
Some of NL’s issues are more
complex than this one. Nevertheless, this problem doesn’t really seem to
be a problem at all. It seems more to me to be an artificial problem conjured
up in the creative minds of those who, for whatever reason, are desperately
looking for a new way to interpret Genesis 1-11. So far, the grammar and syntax
they are employing isn’t working out for them.
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