Avoid Intellectual Suicide: Do Not Interpret the Bible Like a Fundamentalist

Vox Nova ^ | May 14,2 010 | Henry Karlson

[MarkBsnr]

As often as we do it, we remember Him. So, let’s remember Him as often as we can.

[melsec]

Thats a keeper

Blessings

Mel

[delacoert]

I enjoyed reading your post. In particular, I thought your statement

What unites all believing Christians despite our differences is the shared belief that there is no salvation outside of Christ.

was uncommonly succinct and true... found as it was in the middle of the usual Religion Forum wrangling, especially in the midst of a discussion about INTERPRETATION of Scripture.

For all of our cross-denominational (inter-Nicene) vehemence, we Redeemed all agree there is no salvation outside of Christ.

Having said that, I gotta disagree with your application (interpretation) of the scriptural caution:

As we judge, so shall we be judged.

Far too often the injunction against judgment is used by those who know better. There is no shortage of scripture that instructs God's people to judge and correct others. When I see the "it's not right to judge others" clause used, it almost always in a falsely pious attempt to take the high ground.

To say that another Christian or group of Christians is in error does not endanger anyone at the last judgment.

To suggest that someone's interpretation of scripture is in error is not the same as saying the scripture is in error.

Just my thoughts.

[Alamo-Girl]

To the contrary, dear DrewsMum, betty boop summed it up clearly when she said:

In a nutshell, we observers tend to see what we're looking for, and tend to remain blind about all else.

allmendream in the present discussion takes a hard position as an observer in his present space/time coordinates. He argues vigorously that reality "is" a 15 billion year old universe, etc. – that Scriptures must be interpreted in light of his sense of reality. He evidently has no use for the perspective of other observers.

Long ago on a thread I can no longer recall, P-Marlowe in stark contrast said to the effect that since we believe Christ is God, incarnated in the flesh in the body of a virgin, performed miracles – none the least of which was raising the dead, walking on water, causing the blind to see, the crippled to walk, making water into wine – died for our sins, rose again and now is in heaven and will come again at the end of the age … why on earth would any Christian not also believe the Creation account in Genesis, the Noah Flood, etc.?

Different observer, different perspective, different reality, different understanding of Scripture. Both Christian.

In our two posts, 512 and 471, betty boop and I explore that phenomenon which we call the “observer problem.”

It is not an easy subject to explore. It involves on the one hand theology and philosophy and on the other, mathematics and physics.

But it is important, in my opinion, for people to realize that every single mortal person suffers from the observer problem. Man regularly thinks he knows more than he possibly could ever know. Even his physical senses deceive him.

Moreover, God wants us to notice the observer problem.

But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. - 2 Pet 3:8

Indeed, the book of Job ends with Job’s repentance for speaking words without knowledge after God read him the riot act.

Then Job answered the LORD, and said, I know that thou canst do every [thing], and [that] no thought can be withholden from thee. Who [is] he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not.

Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.

Wherefore I abhor [myself], and repent in dust and ashes. - Job 42:1-6

The moral of the story, as betty boop has explained somewhere on this thread, is that God alone sees ‘all that there is’ all at once. Only He speaks objective Truth. Indeed, a thing is true because He says it.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. – Genesis 1:3

For he spake, and it was [done]; he commanded, and it stood fast. – Psalms 33:9

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard. – Psalms 19:1-3

Man is not the measure of God.

To God be the glory, not man, never man!

[Logophile]

I don't get to call heresy. The Church does; we are discussing Christianity here. Any departure from Christianity is heresy at least.

Which church? Christianity encompasses many different churches and denominations, which often disagree with each other on what constitutes heresy and orthodoxy.

If your particular church or denomination considers my beliefs heretical . . . well, I can live with that.

Still, I would like to know which branches of Christianity believe that Christ is disembodied. Perhaps someone will enlighten me.

The point is, what is the official doctrine?

I am not aware that the LDS Church has ever declared an official doctrine on such things as multiple universes or daily life in the celestial kingdom. In the absence of an official declaration (or direct revelation), we are free to draw our own conclusions.

There is no harm in that, so long as our speculations do not distract us from the truly important matters, such as faith, hope, and charity. I trust that everything will be revealed to those who endure faithfully to the end.

13 ¶ Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God shall bring every awork into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

[metmom]

The Bible doesn't give us a "definitive age" for anything. It reveals a tension between God's view from eternity (especially noticeable in Genesis 1–3 as A-G has pointed out) and the view from man's contingent, finite position within that eternity — i.e., "within God's Time" — which is (from our human point of view) "no-time," or timelessness.... Humans experience time in a way radically different than God does, Who sees everything in heaven and on earth "from Alpha to Omega" simultaneously — that is, ALL AT ONCE, as if in a single eternal moment.

We humans, on the other hand, are relentlessly conditioned to sense time as serial and irreversible, moving moment to moment from past to present to future.

Which is exactly why it is such a mistake to assume that our frame of reference is the one to use in interpreting Scripture.

This demand of presuming that scientists have a corner on the determining what is reality market and that their determination is the standard by which we interpret Scripture is rigidly dogmatic of them.

Evolutionists as a whole, tend to scorn anyone who disagrees with them, even to the point of condemning those of obviously significantly greater intellect that they, as if FRevos are brilliant enough to sit in judgment of men of genius and education like Schroeder.

The derision of those who don't think lock step with FRevos adherence to the ToE shows not only their lack of intellectual prowess, but the height of their arrogance.

[metmom]

Christ vociferously condemned the traditions of men when He saw them in the Pharisees.

And Catholics expect us to believe that He’d then turn around and establish an organization based on the thing that He condemned most?

*Tradition* didn’t produce anything. Men wrote what was inspired to them by the Holy Spirit. Later those writings happened to be collected together into one convenient text.

And no, the Catholic Church didn’t write the Bible. Men did and the Catholic Church coming along and proclaiming that the men who wrote the Bible were the *Church Fathers* therefore the Catholic Church *wrote* the Bible is as intellectually dishonest as it comes.

[metmom]

Long ago on a thread I can no longer recall, P-Marlowe in stark contrast said to the effect that since we believe Christ is God, incarnated in the flesh in the body of a virgin, performed miracles – none the least of which was raising the dead, walking on water, causing the blind to see, the crippled to walk, making water into wine – died for our sins, rose again and now is in heaven and will come again at the end of the age … why on earth would any Christian not also believe the Creation account in Genesis, the Noah Flood, etc.?

Funny how acceptance of all the other miracles in the Bible that you mentioned are not met with accusations of *geocentrist*, *flat-earther*, and *Luddite* and screeds about wanting to take us back into the Dark Ages, but when it comes to taking God at His word concerning the creation account, well.... that's a different story.

Details, details......

[Alamo-Girl]

So because you dislike someone's INTERPRETATION of Scripture, your attack and fallback positions are conjured up from naturalistic science?

Don't forget that an INTERPRETATION that you find unacceptable still very much belongs to the domain of "observed reality." The problem is, not everything in observed/observable reality reduces to the techniques of scientific analysis (e.g., direct observation, replicable experiments, etc.), and this would be an example. Get used to it! :^)

Indeed.

Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

[boatbums]

Just curious...does this “infallible doctrine” regarding the conjugal act also include “Natural Family Planning”?

[Alamo-Girl]

Funny how acceptance of all the other miracles in the Bible that you mentioned are not met with accusations of *geocentrist*, *flat-earther*, and *Luddite* and screeds about wanting to take us back into the Dark Ages, but when it comes to taking God at His word concerning the creation account, well.... that's a different story.

So very true, dear sister in Christ!

I doubt if the "scholars" or "naturalists" will give up until they have invented a "god" that fits within their boundaries of what they think "a" "god" can and cannot do.

Man is not the measure of God!

[boatbums]

In other words, the Catholic Church, of course, has always taught that life is sacred

Except, of course, if it is the life of a "heretic" - those lives are okay to snuff out at any point in the life-cycle. Right? I'd be careful with the "always" and "never" statements. I never say, "always". :o)

[betty boop]

To say that another Christian or group of Christians is in error does not endanger anyone at the last judgment.

So we are to busy ourselves about the errors of others — as we see them — rather than to recognize and correct our own errors? Possibly there are biblical passages in support of your statement, "There is no shortage of scripture that instructs God's people to judge and correct others." But as none comes readily to my mind, maybe you could give me some relevant cites?

It seems to me God's basic instruction to us His children is pretty clear and succinct: Love God with all your heart, and soul, and mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.

The Scripture is not in error. If there are "errors," they reside in ourselves.

A very great error — it seems to me — is to think one can make a correct judgment about the state of another's soul, of which one really knows nothing. And then to think that somehow one's judgment is truthful — when one cannot possibly say that without first saying that one knows all the relevant factors that go into making a truthful judgment in such a matter. Another factor is our belief that we have the "correct" reading of the Holy Scriptures. Of course, this is a judgment, too — one that makes all other readings untenable by fiat.

Why shouldn't I think this is an exercise, not in "false piety," but of the pious form of libido dominandi?

What restrains that is my belief that it is not my business to judge you, but only simply to hear you out and try to understand what you see.

Just a last thought: Christianity is finally not about what we know, but about how we live.

Or so it seems to me. JMHO FWIW Thank you for sharing your thoughts, delacoert!

[metmom]

A creationist is someone who believes in creation of all species of animals nearly simultaneously by supernatural means, as opposed to a naturalistic mechanism such as evolution through natural selection and the common descent of species over time.

You wish.....

I am using the familiar and common definition as being of the movement founded in and devoted to the opposition to the theory of evolution through natural selection of genetic variation.

You are not. You are using it as you wish it would be used.

Near as anyone can figure, you so despise the creationist worldview and the stigma you and other scientists put on being a creationist, that you will do anything to avoid having the label in any way, shape, or form applied to you, even when what you believe is creationist in nature.

If you wish to distinguish Young Earth Creationist (which is what you are actually describing) as opposed to a creationist in the generally accepted meaning of the word which everyone but you uses, you are free to specify. What you are not free to do is to change the definition of a word to suit your agenda and then demand that everyone with whom you converse adhere to that definition, especially since there are other well know labels, like *YEC- Young Earth Creationist* which you can use.

No matter how many times you throw your little temper tantrum about redefining that term, nobody is going to buy it.

Ironically, FRevos, who are the first to scream bloody murder when they think that non-scientists are trying to define scientific terms, have no compunction about turning around and doing the same to terms in fields outside their area of expertise.

Just as evos claim the right to define terms like *theory* and *evolution* for example, creationists therefore have the right to define terms which apply to them or their beliefs.

To demand otherwise is hypocrisy personified.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

Jewish Physicist Gerald Schroeder is standing on the shoulders of a giant:

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." - Albert Einstein

And there are many other physicists (Vafa, Wesson, Tegmark, et al) who focus on the geometry of space/time - some of them proposing there are more than one dimension of time. In such models, time is either a plane or volume, the arrow of time is an illusion to an observer on a worldline in space/time. Past, present and future exist concurrently.

Tegmark's metaphor of the frog and bird in his Level IV Parallel Universe makes the point very well (formatted for easier reading:)

A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time. If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape.

Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime — the bird perspective — these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti.

If the frog sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix.

To the frog, the world is described by Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta — a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of particles that store and process information.

Our universe is far more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds.

Tegmark, Max, “Parallel Universes,” Scientific American, May, 2003

The frog cannot see what the bird sees. He is an observer "in" space/time. He cannot see the beginning and end of every thing or how it fits together.

Moreover, the Bible does not purport to be a textbook in physics.

Indeed, Creation week is described by God in roughly forty statements whereas libraries are filled to the rafters with books on mathematics, physics and physical cosmology.

The words of God must be spiritually discerned.

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. - I Cor 2:13-14

God's Name is I AM.

[metmom]

God told Lott he wished he could grab the Earth by its four corners and shake out the evil.

Who's *Lott*?

And where did you come up with this alleged insight into how God thinks and what He wants? You wouldn't happen to have a Scriptural reference for this?

If you wish to discuss a passage of Scripture, you ought to cite it and give the reference so people can determine if what you're referring to is really in the Bible in the first place.

[betty boop]

What if I say that I don’t interpret it the same as you and I think I can kill someone I don’t like??

Then either you do not understand God's Word, His eternal Will and Truth; or you simply refuse to be bound by it. For a flat-out, straightforward, plain-language command of God — "thou shalt not murder" — is really not something subject to much "interpretation."

You wrote: "if we go by the theory that everyone could have their “own” beliefs and be correct, then that would cause massive confusion."

That is NOT my theory. God's Truth is One Truth — and He wants us to know it, according to the light and grace He has endowed in us. The Holy Bible speaks of "milk" and "meat." God knows which is best for each of us....

In closing, a final thought: The Holy Scriptures is the total ANTIDOTE to "tower building," in the specific sense of the Tower of Babel....

Just some thoughts. Thank you so very much for sharing your thoughts, DrewsMum!

[MHGinTN]

Placemarker ... God made us to operate via data received, thus we are oriented to the past, albeit recent past most of the time, but oriented to the past events we sense. There are episodes int he Bible which indicate that our sensing of the where/when of our universe is not even near complete, like the being who stood in one where/when while reaching over into the party central of the King in Babylon, to write a judgment on the wall; the being was in one where/when while the hand reached ‘back’/’over/into the where/when of Belshazzar [Daniel Chptr5]. And that is but one episode of several in the Bible pages! The Resurrection itself is an astonishing example of another connection to an existing where/when we cannot sense in our present state. BUT, God has promised His family will, eventually.

[metmom]

Just curious...does this “infallible doctrine” regarding the conjugal act also include “Natural Family Planning”?

Interesting stand the RCC takes on sex and family planning.

Sex is a no-no for priests, nuns, and Mary, (in spite of a decided lack of Scriptural evidence for those doctrines), and yet birth control and abortion are soundly condemned by the RCC.

It would be interesting to see how *Natural Family Planning* fits in all this.

[betty boop]

But it is important, in my opinion, for people to realize that every single mortal person suffers from the observer problem. Man regularly thinks he knows more than he possibly could ever know. Even his physical senses deceive him.

What a magnificent essay/post, dearest sister in Christ!

RE: the above italics: I suspect most folks nowadays don't realize how true this insight is. They never even think about it.

But what they often do think about is the idea that human knowledge has no limits....

This is manifestly untrue. But it's getting late, so I have to call it a night for now. Early day tomorrow....

Good night, dearest sister in Christ! And thank you once again for your outstanding essay/post!