What I'm about to say is going to ruffle some feathers. Some people definitely won't like it. That's ok. Let me hear about it.
I'm going to start by just coming out with the controversial part, then I'll go back and explain. That might take a little while. But here we go.
Conservative Christians have come to believe they are fighting against the modern world which tries to explain away the Bible. The modern world doesn't believe in miracles, so the miraculous parts of the Bible were obviously made up. So they say. The problem with the Christian response is that it often --usually-- relies on some of the same modern assumptions that are used to criticize the Bible. What happens is that the Christian ends up defending the Bible on the grounds that, "God can get His facts straight."
That is just simply not acceptable. There are good arguments on both sides of debates about which passages in scripture are historical and which are literary. Both certainly exist, which can be easily demonstrated. The historical truth of the existence of King David, the accuracy of the gospel of Luke, etc, and many other points on which the historical facts do back up the Bible. Then there are parts of the Bible that are obviously poetic or symbolic. In the Psalms, and by Jesus in the N.T., God is described as a chicken who cares for her chicks. And in Psalm 57 David says, "In the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge." Does that mean God is a great big Chicken?
Then there are cases that are more difficult to determine. Genesis, Jonah, Job, Daniel, Revelation, just to name a few. I believe there are good arguments for why different passages may be historical/literal or more 'literary', on both sides. And I don't have all those points figured out. Even if I did, it is often of less importance than applying the passages to our lives. But nevertheless, it is a mistake to use the argument, either directly or as a hidden premise, that "God can get his facts straight."
As I explain myself I'll be covering some ground we've covered before. As we went from predominantly pre-modern to modern, the meaning of 'fact' changed. There was also a corresponding change in the meaning of 'objective.' The original meaning of 'objective' was that something had it's origin outside of an individual's mind. For example, it is 'objectively' true that adultery is wrong. This is something determined by God, who is the law giver, the one who decides right and wrong. It isn't something I think is true because I happen to prefer it to be true. It really is. But the modern understanding of 'objective' is different. The word now means that something is true, "and I can show it to you." The modern world only accepts as 'objective' those things that can be demonstrated empirically, through the senses.
The same thing happened to the word 'fact.' Facts today deal with only material and measurable things. So, it may be a 'fact' that the earth goes around the sun, but it cannot be a 'fact' that adultery is wrong. It can be a preference or an opinion, but not a fact. To a modern mind many of the realities of life are optional opinions because of the way 'fact' as been defined.
This is also tied together with the modern misunderstanding of cause and effect. I've pointed out before that to really understand something you have to understand it in 4 different ways. Things have formal, final, material, and efficient causes, not just one cause. In the modern way of understanding there is only 1 category of causes, and it's a hybrid cause, a combination of the material and efficient. The modern world has done away with formal and final causes, that is, design, meaning, and purpose.
What happens when conservatives go to interpret the Bible, all too often, is we start with the unspoken premise that "God can get his facts straight." But it involves a modern mindset, that puts the entire emphasis on material causes. This limits our ability to understand what God is telling us. I don't know for sure whether creation happened in 6 days, billions of years, or somewhere in between. I tend to think it took a long time. I also think there are some good arguments both ways. But I also think that God was not writing/inspiring with the modern misconception of the word fact. Ironically, sometimes as we try to prove the modern world wrong, by the argument we use we end up agreeing with them.
More to come.
