flooding and scripture

Matthew Weber · 21 Dec 2010, 21:41 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: palaeologos at gmail.com (Matthew Weber)
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2010 13:41:29 -0800
Subject: (urth) flooding and scripture
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On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Jack Smith <jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com>wrote:

>
> It seems to me that the main Christian tradition has never favored a
> literal reading of scripture.  But I don't have the evidence at hand to back
> that up.  Let me just give the view of my Presbyterian Church:
>
> "The Scriptures,  given under  the guidance  of the Holy Spirit, are
> nevertheless  the words of men, conditioned  by the language, thought
> forms, and literary fashions  of the places  and times at which they were
> written. They reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then
> current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to  approach  the
> Scriptures  with literary and historical  understanding. "
>
>
> " Scripture is not authoritative for any and everything, in any and every
> question. It is not an encyclopedia of information about every area of human
> knowledge and understanding. So, for instance, it is not appropriate to go
> to the biblical sources for scientific understanding of such things as
> biology, astronomy, the structure of the universe, or historical knowledge
> in general. "
>
>
> *Presbyterian Understanding and Use of Holy Scripture*,   1982
>
I think it would be fairer to say that there has always been a tension
between the tendency to interpret Scripture literally and the tendency to
treat certain elements in it figuratively.  There was great hostility to
Darwinian theory from Anglican clergy, for example, although we wouldn't
think of the Church of England today as being particularly interested in
Biblical literalism.  But the goalposts have moved, in a sense, with each
major scientific discovery, and we're forced to sift our understanding of
Scripture with what we know about how our world works--though to be frank I
don't think a figurative interpretation of the first 10-15 chapters of
Genesis really has much of an effect on the validity of Christianity, any
more than understanding that the parable of Dives and Lazarus was a story
Jesus made up to illustrate a point.

Having a knowledge of literary genre and historical context is indispensable
for understanding the Bible.  On the surface, there's nothing objectionable
about the Presbyterian statement above, although the limits for that
hermeneutic don't seem to be set very clearly.  There's an awful lot of
special pleading and fancy dancing in the mainline churches these days
regarding Scripture, most of it looking for loopholes to justify things
which are fairly clearly condemned in it.  It's unfortunate that many seem
to abstract their religious principles from their politics, rather than the
other way around.

-- 
Matt +

There is something beyond the grave; death does not end all, and the pale
ghost escapes from the vanquished pyre.
    Sextus Propertius (54 B.C.-A.D. 2), Elegies, IV, vii, 1
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