Comments on William Lane Craig on Historical Adam

That’s an overly simplistic way to analyze it. I’m not convinced by Ross’ interpretation, either, but this is not a good reason for rejecting it. There isn’t an exact parallel of Genesis 1 in the OT, so it’s futile to ask for another passage that uses all three words in the same way. A better start is to determine the genre of Genesis 1 from its overall literary features and ask if a metaphorical interpretation would make sense. Then you look at instances of yom where it is used metaphorically and see the contexts of those passages. Same with the other two words.

Kline’s classic 1958 paper: https://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Kline_NotRained_WTJ.pdf

This is also a classic by Kline: Space and Time in the Genesis Cosmogony - Meredith G. Kline Resource Site

John Sailhamer’s Genesis Unbound is available electronically on Amazon for $9.99. If you don’t want to buy it, you can read a summary here, which gives you the idea.

John Walton’s Lost World of Genesis One is available electronically for $3.99 on Amazon.

Perhaps an important feature of all three scholars above is that they don’t argue that the text teaches an old universe; they just argue it doesn’t conflict with it because it’s not meant to speak to that question.

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I’m dubious. And I do think that the usage of all three words in combination and in context reinforces the literal interpretation.

That’s an entirely different matter. In that case the interpretation would be that yom does mean “day” but that the authors didn’t consider the literal story to be the important message. That makes much more sense than the questionable exegeses I’m talking about. Thanks for the references.

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8 posts were split to a new topic: Does 24 hour days imply a young earth?

Aren’t those (texts, cognates, passages) all words? The point is that you would not arise at some of the interpretations (such as the sun becoming visible) purely from written texts. These interpretations exist purely to overcome inconsistencies between texts versus physical evidence.

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A) By being just as human as the people who interpret the texts, having lived decades as a human having human-to-human interactions, and therefore having a first-person experience of how humans think and engage in motivated reasoning. And by having been a Christian myself up until my mid-twenties, who always felt some conflict between the texts and science. I really don’t believe I would be all that unique in these respects. No, you and all the other re-interpretationists are doing it because you know the book conflicts with science.

B) Historical precedence: Just where are all the pre-scientific old-Earth creationists anyway, who thought Genesis is full of scientific errors before modern archaeology, physics, and geology revealed that? That’s right, they’re so close to non-existent they might as well be.

I don’t see how that distinguishes the two sentences by WLC that I quoted. It appears to me they entail a rather obvious contradiction.

WLC: We cannot allow modern science to guide our biblical theology so as to avoid the Young Earth interpretation. But we can, in light of modern science, be motivated to consider afresh our interpretation of the biblical texts to see if we have properly understood them.

First Craig says we can’t allow science to guide biblical theology. Then he says you can actually do that, use science to guide your biblical theology. Of course, one can try to wiggle out of that by insisting that “biblical theology” is not the same as “interpretation of the biblical texts”. Or that being motivated to do something doesn’t mean you should. But let’s be honest here, that’s not what he meant.

You cannot, but you can. That’s what the words WLC wrote mean.

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I’m not going to exegete WLC’s words to argue if he made a formal contradiction in his wording, because I understand what he meant, and it’s basically what I said. The words that WLC wrote make sense to anyone who’s actually read through a wide range of interpretations of Genesis or other biblical texts and are familiar with the debates within evangelicalism about hermeneutics and science. Josh and I worked within this dynamic in my response to Madueme’s review to argue that people outside the Garden are not ruled out by Scripture. Once again, there’s a difference between personal or circumstantial motivations to revisit a theological stance and the actual arguments deployed in favor of a new stance. Are you more interested in proving WLC was technically saying a contradiction in that podcast or actually learning the wider meaning of he said?

You seem wedded to the point that the biblical text must be interpreted according to YEC “plain reading” of the text, and any non-YEC reading is just “compromise” and being influenced by science. This is standard fare among less informed YECs, and it’s been pretty hard to change their minds, so I can’t see how I can easily change yours. I would instead direct you to read some of the stuff I mentioned to John.

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Yes of course, and that would be one of my points. That because the motivation for doing re-interpretations in the first place come from outside of the texts, from outside of the historical and literary context, that makes the arguments employed to defend the alternative interpretations seem weak and implausible.

This wasn’t really about WLC at all. The contradiction implied by his words just provided another easy target for criticism, because it doesn’t make sense to say that you cannot do something only then to immediately turn around and say the opposite in the very next sentence.

I wouldn’t say that. I’d say that weak and implausible interpretations suggest that the motivations don’t come from the text. Or, to put it another way, if there are strong motivations supplying the interpretation, there will be a temptation to accept weak arguments.

Agreed. I should correct my statement to say that the main thing that make the alternative interpretations seem weak and implausible are the literal words themselves. And that having an understanding of the surrounding culture and science of the people doing the reinterpretations(and the historical changes there have been in these), better supports the inference that these reinterpretations really aren’t based on plausible historical or literary analysis in the end.

I think it’s interesting we’re talking about weak and implausible interpretations when some of us have barely read the best of these alternate interpretations.

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Some very concordist interpretations would fit in this category. Not all.

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The real problem here is twofold.

  1. Let’s say that, as God, you want to provide a written revelatory framework which communicates important truths about humanity, the cosmos, and the earth’s interbalanced ecosystems, such that, though nature in the raw is powerful and even intimidating, you neverthless wish to convey truths which will help your readers transcend these challenges to their own sense of purpose, and even provide lasting existential comfort.
    How are you going to craft a message which fits those criteria spanning centuries of social change, changes in scientific knowledge, changes in paradigms, etc. to be written down once for all time by an ancient person?
  2. Are you allowed to use literary methods which, while transparent to one culture or epoch, are not as easily apprehended by another?
  3. As scientific knowledge increases, it often serves to displace our confidence in less “literal” explanations, but that need not be so.
    RTB, as one example, shows real promise, as Joshua has elucidated, in being able to bridge the gap between the mindset of the ancients and the insights of the modern by using the “two books” paradigm explanation to guide their model-making and apologetics.
    That is, the time-honored distinction of “general revelation” and “special revelation” in Judaeo-Christian theology is supposed to inform us during these tensions, to discern the mind and intentions of our eternal Creator.
    For a mind set on discrediting such as even a possibility, no answer will ever be good enough.
    For minds set on trying to discover the continuity of both “books,” there is real hope for a satisfactory set of answers.
    Christian theology often speaks of both the “now” and the “not yet” nature of the life lived by faith.
    It’s perfectly fine to “allow our scientific progress to drive us back to the text,” to search for answers which, up until now, are those which had “not yet” been apprehended.
    Science itself goes through these changes, as “paradigm shifts,” so it is not a “weakness” particular to Judaeo-Christian theology. It is, instead, a strength.
    While it is too often a faulty and lagging process, nevertheless, all Judaeo-Christians share more in common over what really matters, than the differences in their interpretations of these matters.
    For those who have investigated the questions of the certainty of Jesus’ resurrection, and have found in that a basis for gaining hopeful knowledge in continuity with that truth in other areas, it is a matter of satisfying, lifelong exploration.
    Just as it is for those scientists who have weathered the centuries of reaching discussions, discovered new evidence, undergone divisive paradigm changes, all in search of coherent knowledge.
    You don’t have to deny the one to have the other.
    That’s where WLC may be in danger of overstating his case.

You’re God, you can keep updating the book indefinitely with your unlimited divine omnipotence and insight. You can magically make the book make perfect culturally contextual sense to anyone who opens it to look inside.

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Nope.
Not even God will force “Himself” upon those who refuse to acknowledge “Him.”
God models the values “He” hopes to inculcate in us.
One of the things God does is to present “revelation” --timeless truths which do not get “updated.”
I’m talking about the God Who is, not some inferior version.

To say that writing clearly and for ease of comprehension is “forcing yourself upon” someone is a serious contender for one of the most absurd statements I have ever read.

If you don’t want to read a particular book, you can simply elect not to. And if you don’t like what it says, you can proceed to ignore it after having read it. A book intended to carry an important message being immediately comprehensible to everyone, can’t be reasonably argued to be a flaw or inferior.

The point is to update them for comprehension so that people who didn’t grow up wielding iron-age weapons and tools, or herding goats under the Roman empire, would still understand the messages it contains. An omnipotent God could do that.

A book that contains stories or allegories or metaphors or other kinds of “truthes” that require a substantial immersion in, and understanding of the time-period in which it was written, is a less clear and comprehensible book than one that can be easily understood in any historically contingent context.

Ahh yes, the “superior” God that’s more easily misunderstood. Look at what a completely ridiculous position your theology is forcing you to argue.

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Like I said.

Indeed, but I think I heard much the same thing here very recently, when somebody suggested that for there to be an adequate amount of evidence to demonstrate the existence of a god would involve that god in “epistemic coercion,” which evidently is something a god wouldn’t get up to. Every time I see a convincing scientific conclusion backed by substantial evidence, I now reject it, because, you know, who wants to be epistemically coerced?

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I’m not. I wouldn’t limit it to one person, or one time. I wouldn’t have it written down; better to carve it into something like an obelisk - or dozens of them. I wouldn’t use words, I’d use pictures. I’d also make sure it was available to everyone, not just people who happened to be born in the right culture(s), and was clear enough that it wouldn’t be easily misinterpreted.

Bigotry, incomprehensibility, and fondness for mass slaughter?

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