Curious what theologians throughout history made of Genesis 4

I’ll ignore the majority of your post that is repetitive and combative, and focus on a few points where you reveal your position with new clarity:

Ah, now we are getting somewhere. You give “mainstream medical science” veto power over the the teaching of the Bible. Your principle is that if the most natural and historically normal way of reading of the Bible is incompatible with what the majority of modern scientists think they know, then either (a) the Bible must be regarded as teaching something that is false about reality; or (b) the Bible must be re-interpreted in a less natural way in order to yield an interpretation which the majority of modern scientists will allow.

No wonder you liked BioLogos so much. Like BioLogos, you give scientists veto power over interpretation of the Bible, but you give the Bible no corresponding veto power over the conclusions of science. You were a perfect fit with them. So how come you’re not posting there any longer?

I guess that in your version of Christian faith the most natural reading of the text of the Gospels doesn’t count as a “theological argument.”

How could I not be? But of course, Bultmann’s position is roundly denounced by virtually all orthodox Christians of every denomination. It’s mainly popular in very liberal Christian circles. You can hear Bultmannesque ideas about “demythologizing” in sermons preached in, say, the United Church of Christ or the various liberal branches of Anglicanism; and of course his ideas are very popular in secular Religious Studies departments among those professors of Biblical Studies and Christian Thought who want to retain some vague connection with Christianity and the Bible even though they have dumped many core doctrines.

You mean, “even some scholars.” Without the word “some” your words sound like a generalization which your single example can’t sustain.

You’re imputing thoughts to him; and “simply can’t be defended anymore” is your opinion.

I find it telling that you find the stories about demon possession in the New Testament incredible, but don’t also find the stories about feeding thousands with less than the equivalent of seven Happy Meals incredible, or the story of the Plagues and the Red Sea incredible, or the story about walking on water incredible, or the stories of instant and total healings of leprosy incredible, or the story of the Resurrection incredible. Or are you consistent in this regard? Do you perhaps also have alternate interpretations for all those narrative, interpretations driven by what you think “the consensus of modern science” permits?

No, any views I express on the meaning of the Biblical text are based on literary exegesis, not my personal theology. I take into account the Greek (or Hebrew) grammar and style, the literary structure, etc. What I don’t do is phone up profs from the nearby biology or physics departments and ask them what interpretations of the text are allowed and what ones are forbidden. Ironically, you accuse me of bringing something outside and foreign to the text (my personal theology), when it is you who is bringing something outside and foreign to the text (the judgments of a supposed consensus of scientists about how God could possibly have acted in the past).

I couldn’t care less how a phrase is used by fundamentalists. I’m not a fundamentalist. I’m not going to discontinue the use of a perfectly good English phrase merely because some fundamentalists misuse it.

Like God, and creation out of nothing, and miracles, and the election of Israel, and the Red Sea, and the giving of the Law, and the prophecies, and the miracles of Jesus, and the Resurrection, and the Trinity, etc. Which of those are “stupid” ideas, in your view?

Are you arguing that the misuse of a doctrine during some periods of Christian history means that the doctrine is not true?

You’re misunderstanding the thrust of my argument. I’m actually quite comfortable with disagreeing with either the majority of Christians, or with the great Christian theologians. But I find it quite telling that you think the majority view on global warming or evolution should be sacrosanct, to the point where any dissenters should be browbeaten into submission, whereas you think majority views of competent Christian theologians should be treated as of no force, and thumb your nose at them if they don’t match your personal sectarian theological views. Your demand that I kowtow to the majority of experts seems to rest on a pretty shaky foundation, given your own behavior in theological matters.

No, I said that it was not certain.

I never used the term “alarmist” to refer to the view that the earth has warmed one or two degrees in the past 150 years; nor did I ever use the term “alarmist” to refer to the view that human activity, including human generation of CO2, has contributed, even significantly contributed, to the warming. I have used the term “alarmist” only in relationship to the use of “apocalyptic” scenarios, sketched with great rhetorical fervor, in an effort to get governments to adopt massively interventionist and sometimes ill-advised economic and political policies.

But let’s come back to your theological views. You wrote this:

I see, so the Christians who have believed that Jesus was God were “totally wrong” and “didn’t know what they were talking about.”

I’d like to hear from Joshua, Daniel Ang, Glipsnort, Chris Falter, Jon Garvey, Daniel Deen, and the many other Christians who post here. Do they agree with your conclusions about Jesus? Do they agree with your conclusions about any of the other matters you list?

@AllenWitmerMiller
@swamidass
@Jordan
@dga471
@Philosurfer
@jongarvey
@Chris_Falter
@glipsnort

Yep. (Eddie’s statement is so obviously true that a mere “Yes.” didn’t seem sufficient.)

Ditto.

I’ll let my reply on another thread complete my response:

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Criticism and PS

Actually, I’d argue it does agree …

https://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/Genesis-Accurately-Describes-Geological-and-Biological-Formation-of-Planet-from-Surface-Perspective

@Jeremy_Christian,

What is the current pay rate for being a full time Contrarian?

You are the one who championed the notion that the Bible has plenty of errors in it.
Genesis 1 says birds were created before terrestrial animals.

And of course it talks about the days of the Earth even before there was a Sun created on Day 4.

Gen 1:16
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Gen 1:17
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,

Gen 1:18
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

Gen 1:19
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Gen 1:20
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

Gen 1:21
And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Gen 1:22
And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

Gen 1:23
And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

Gen 1:24
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
[END OF VERSES]

These are not agreements… nor can they be construed as “figurative agreements”.

Your bi-weekly Contrarian salary should be cut by 20%.

Both of these are addressed in the article above.

It does. Editing errors and that kind of thing that happened way later, but there’s no editing or redacting where the creation account is concerned.

You have a tendency to read with mechanical literalness, and then to try to “catch the author out” on some word or phrase that isn’t 100% literally true. Can’t you bring yourself to meet someone halfway, and take the statement to mean, “Religion is one of the worst things in the world” or “Religion is very, very bad for the world” or “The world would be better off without religion” or the like? It would make civilized conversation so much easier if you would be a wee bit more flexible, and a wee bit less contentious, in your readings of others’ words.

@Jeremy_Christian

This is just too lazy for me… Or maybe I’m too lazy for you.

You wave your hand UPWARDS… and you expect me to go looking.
And you don’t tell me the name of the article, and you don’t tell me what
the point is that it is saying…

In other words… you wasted a whole posting…and now I’m wasting a whole posting telling you that you wasted a posting.

Provide more information or just stop…

@Jeremy_Christian

And now you are saying the errors that made you doubt the accuracy of the Bible are just “editing” errors… which means YOU have the correct interpretation…

Let me know when you find someone who can accept your special recipe of totally inane narrative.

You snipped the part where I asked if that was hyperbole. I assume that you now imply that it was. You need to try harder to be clear. And you should probably engage with the rest of my comment rather than just pulling out one little bit as if you’re trying to catch me out, to coin a phrase.

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The errors I pointed out was just to make the point that it should be recognized that these texts were made by humans and that this is not a document miraculously edited and compiled by God himself and laid at our feet.

I do still hold these writings in high regard and think there are some significant insights, especially in these first 5 books that are much older than the rest.

Well, that article is mine. Each and everything you see to be inaccurate in the creation is laid out sequentially in that article. Every explanation I can give you is already there.

If there’s anything you disagree with, I’ll be happy to address it. But the short answer is, my claim that the creation account is consistent with what we know is laid out in its entirety in that article.

That’s not actually an argument, though, is it? You just waved your hand in the direction of someone else’s claim. I took a look, and the whole thing is ridiculous. It relies on absurd distortions of meaning in both the bible and science. But of course that’s your MO.

The nonsense about the 5th day is as silly as the rest, from both standpoints. Birds and whales before land animals? It’s necessary to redefine both land animals (apparently just post-Cretaceous mammals, and even that doesn’t fit the part about whales) and “let the seas bring forth”. That thing made my brain hurt.

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@Jeremy_Christian,

And you make things just too hard for me.

When I finally found your article… I found that my anti-viral system wouldn’t let me enter the domain.

So… your attempt to “save lots of time by explaining yourself on an impossible matter” is completely wasted on me. I can’t read it.

And I don’t believe there is any way you can explain how birds could be created out of the waters… ALL BEFORE terrestrial animals are created on land.

So… you and I are done.

In scientific scholarship, doing so is profoundly unethical.

But if you don’t cite those with informed opinions who don’t agree with you and address the disagreements, it isn’t scholarship.

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He does it by redefining what happened on both day 5 and day 6. When the waters bring forth life on day 5, that’s all about the first terrestrial vertebrates (and invertebrates too? not clear) coming out of the water, not creation happening in the water. Day 6 involves just the big post-Cretaceous mammal radiation, not terrestrial animals in general. He doesn’t seem to realize that the creation of whales on day 5 destroys even this tortured interpretation. Anyway, your anti-viral system is doing you a favor.

You understand that each creation on each subsequent “day” is a wave that happens over time. It’s not just miracled, poof, into existence. Life was created and commanded to multiply according to their kind and to fill the Earth. A process that happens over a significant amount of time.

What’s important to recognize is the two waves of animal life described, the first being the syropsids, the second wave, the synapsids.

Syropsids include basically everything but mammals, including fish and birds. So as that wave was continuing, the second wave began. Birds came at the end of the first wave, with the second wave overlapping.

So, as you can see, it can be explained.

You mean “sauropsids”, of which only birds are mentioned on day 5. The other living sauropsids are generally taken to be “creeping things”: day 6. And of course synapsids arose before sauropsids. Your story doesn’t hold together either on biblical or scientific grounds. As usual.

Oh, and fish are not sauropsids. Who told you that?

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I agree with @John_Harshman’s comment.

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