The real problem here is twofold.
- 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? - Are you allowed to use literary methods which, while transparent to one culture or epoch, are not as easily apprehended by another?
- 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.