Posted on 07/26/2018 11:19:19 AM PDT by fishtank
Well, Genesis 6:1 usually makes the theologians nervous.
You know...the thing that fundamentalists should be doing instead of arrogantly pretending like they understand it perfectly.
Yet, if one thinks about it, the Bible cannot be taken as science or history because neither discipline existed when the Bible was composed. At most, we may attempt in a limited fashion to validate the Bible as science and history by applying the standards and reasoning of those and other modern disciplines. In doing so though, we should always keep sight that the Bible was a product of its eras of composition and of the purposes of its authors and editors.
Thus, in keeping with ancient practice, the Bible was grounded on actual events even though it also added details and interpretation so as to better provide moral instruction and a proper setting for revelation and prophecy. More than mere history or myth, the Bible is literature in the grand sense of a written work meant to inform, instruct, and elevate its readers.
As a matter of historical fact, the Bible fulfilled that purpose by providing the moral grounding for Western civilization. As much as I disagree with Fundamentalists about how the Bible should be viewed, I am in full agreement with them in seeing it and Christianity as essential to the survival of Western civilization.
I’ve just recently discovered Dr. Peterson. I would not take everything he says as gospel (no irony intended). However, I find him a thoughtful man and I would not dismiss him lightly.
I think he places too much emphasis on evolution. I accept evolution even if I don’t like it, but it is used to describe too much and it cannot be falsified, which I think weakens it as a theory.
Dr. Peterson is our modern day C.S. Lewis, the leading Christian apologist of our generation.
If this topic is of interest to anyone I recommend “So Noted”, The Genesis Commentary by Dr. Henry Morris the father of the modern creationist movement. He also co-wrote “The Genesis Flood”, a total rebuke of the last 200 years of uniformitarianism philosophy that invaded all the institutions of higher learning.
The Bible is the story of God’s involvement in human history.
Why be a Christian if you open up the Bible and on the first first sentence say “God Lied.”?
There are fundamentalist Christian pastors AND rabbis who consider the metaphysical interpretation of his work correct.
The problem is with the liberal secular hater demonizing his work, not the religious interpretation of scripture.
LOL!
“he is actually promoting a worldview which is diametrically opposed to Christianity.”
I doubt he is doing that. He is looking at Christianity as myth which many mainstream protestant theologians also did during the 60s. And he is giving himself an opening to the more conventional view that Jesus was the divine Son of God by saying that if we pursue the good (as Jesus had done) we don’t know what this can lead to — suggesting, in my opinion, it leads to divinity.
Further, according to the Catholic notion of “Anonymous Christian” anybody can be a Christian without knowing it, and this includes Buddhist, Jews, Atheists, etc.
For me the problem with Peterson is that he is juggling a lot of balls and they can end up bumping into each other: he is an existentialist, pragmatist, phenomenologist, Darwinian biologist, Jungian psychologist, Clinical psychologist, etc. On one hand, he thinks the idea of God was created as an abstraction when humans were close to being a tribe of clever monkeys (Darwinist). On the other hand, he believes in the logos (God). The strange thing is that he says that he can’t account for this — I’ve asked him. And he doesn’t have scientific proof that humans actually created this hollow abstraction called God way back in the mists of time. So who knows what to make of this... he doesn’t know himself.
I think Peterson goes out on a limb with his speaking and is also very casual and homey at times — this is his charm — where he can go from scientist to something anecdotal or speculative without us knowing that he has changed hats. For all his talk about be precise in his speech this ambiguous aspect seems to dog him.
Dennis Prager asked him if he believes in God. And he said yes. How and in what way I don’t think he even knows yet himself. This is something he is wrestling with.
??
If JP is a Christian, then that’s a loose definition of a Jesus follower.
There are a lot of cultural Christians, who will disappear when the persecution begins.
we are witnessing the emergence of a highly trainee mind as it grapples seriously with the great themes of culture.
I agree!
And of His people’s experience in the world.
Yes. I was looking for a way to express that important truth. The Jewish people remain the people of gGd, yesterday, today, and forever.
Faithful Christians are also the people of God, extending what He first granted to the Jewish people to all mankind.
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