Who determines which parts.....

Amen, Brother husband, preach it

 

Ed Edwards said:

Friend, is that a true fact! Hummm!!!

rufus

 

Joshua asked:

Good question!

And Jim1999 made some comments:

Good observation. There is no doubt that the rise of scientific evolution was a great challenge to fundamentalism. In seeking to answer the challenge, there were some overreactions by fundamentalists. The gap theory was one of them. However, over time it became evident that holding to the gap theory required hermeneutical gymnastics that contradicted literal interpretation and the gap theory was rejected. Today, there is a large body of literature from fundamentalists teaching other than the gap theory and, to my knowledge, none of our larger Bible colleges or seminaries continue to propagate it. Our commitment to literal interpretation is intact and a dubious conclusion like the gap theory did not survive. That's a sign of good health in the movement in my view.

Also:

Agreed. And whether we like it or not, we are often unduly influenced in our conclusions by our culture and what it thinks (i.e. the gap theory).

And:

I for one do not understand everything in God's Word. There is a sense in which theology develops over time. Often we are forced by issues that arise in culture, life, and the church to re-think our position and refine the way that we state it. This has happened repeatedly in the history of the church. When issues arise, we have to go back to Paul's command to Timothy "Be diligent to show yourself to God an approved workmen who does not need to be ashamed, laying out straight the Word of truth...."

Now back to Joshua's question. Taking things literally is not an simple question of literalism or non-literalism. Other factors come into play. For instance, Jesus said "I am the shepherd and you are the sheep." I take that statement literally.
1. I take it literally in the sense that I believe Jesus literally said it.
2. I take it literally in the sense that I seek to understand what Jesus meant by it. Finding this sense involves examining the statement grammatically, contextually, literarelly, historically, and theologically.
3. I take it literally in the sense that I, in my personal life, seek to follow Jesus Christ with a singular devotion.

The problem with you as a liberal Joshua is that you (or at least if not you, many liberals) get tripped up on #1. They are not sure if Jesus really said that or not. They think that somebody might have made it up and attributed it to Jesus at a later time. If #1 is not certain, then 2 and 3 become of little consequence. The authority of scripture is lost and the truth of what Jesus taught is frittered away. Frankly, a person would be better off to take the statement too literally, go in the front yard and start eating grass, than to reject the statement and not follow Jesus at all. The latter end is where your modern scholarship will lead them.

 

But when a scholar does the same thing with Paul's verses on women, fundamentalists invariably claim that we are trying to distort the plain reading of the text. This seems inconsistant to me.

Joshua

P.S. I realize that Jesus may not have said every word attributed to him in the gospels (particularly in a couple places in John); but the content of those statements must have been consistent with his teachings or his followers wouldn't have preserved them.

 

I think there are two differences in the approach of your scholars which make up an interpretive difference that we (fundamentalists) simply cannot tolerate. For one thing, Paul bases his arguments about women on (among other things) the Genesis creation account. Because you do not believe the account to be actual, but to be mythical, you reject his argumentation and thus his conclusion. Secondly, there is a difference in the way we view inspiration and in what we consider to be inspired. Paul writes with apostolic authority in his epistles and from what I have seen of your posts, you reject his authority. As a consequence of these two, I don't think you are interpreting the text the same way we are. Our approach accepts Paul's authority (because of his apostleship) and his reasoning (because of the historicity of the OT accounts from which he argues). Thus we approach the text with the expectation that Paul is telling us something we MUST do. You approach it as the musings of someone who is merely a man and is definitely mistaken in his view of the OT. It's no wonder you do not feel bound by what he is saying. Those are serious differences Joshua and it is incorrect to refer to what we do and what you do as

 

The Bible was not written for the elite to study for generations to find out what God "Really meant to say." God said what He meant and meant what He said. He intended for regular, average, normal people to understand him.

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. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 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. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

99% of ordinary, average, regular people could tell you what that statement means. They are not going to be befuddled by questions like, "What is a star, what is a light, what is rule, what is fourth, etc. I think verse 19 was thrown in just for the thick headed people who might wonder just exactly what is a day.

Exod 20:8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

My difficulty is not in understanding what a "day" is. My difficulty is in understanding why anyone else would have a difficult time with it. I taught Special Education for 15 years and I had students with IQ's between 44 and 138 and I never had a student who didn't understand what a "day" was. It didn't matter whether I used a sentence about "3 days", or "during the day", or "back in cowboy days". I am aware that there are a few places which give rise to questions, even to average folks like me, but, this isn't one of them. There is no reason to believe that the account in Genesis isn't to be taken as literal. It wouldn't be at all difficult for God to do it that way. He said he did it that way. When the Bible speaks of something as though it really happened then I think it really happened. When the Bible speaks of something as though it were a story to illustrate a point then I think it was a story to illustrate a point (parable, analogy, etc.).

 

It is all true.

It is sometimes complex, but I assume a passage is literal unless there are textual/contextual clues which lead me to a non-literal interpretation.

If a passage lends itself to a literal interpretation, I assume it is factual.

Yes.

It is in the Bible which is accepted by Christians as authoritative.

Probably not.

On the textual/contextual evidence.

In the broad sense, yes. God is the Creator of all that there is. God is also a personal God and created us with intention and care. There are many other broad facts that we can draw from this passage. I do not think this passage was intended to explain the process or sequence of creation, but to reveal the God of creation.

On the textual/contextual evidence of this passage and knowledge of other portions of the Bible. I also enhanced my understanding of this passage by the study of other ancient cosmologies and the similarities and differences between the pagan beliefs and the Jewish faith.

Done.

Of course a careful reading of the Genesis passages demonstrate that they do not specify six 24-hour days of creation, so you are assuming a position the scripture does not necessarily support.

Nope. The scripture is not "so clear on it" at all. In fact, Genesis 2:4 seems to indicate that everything was created in one day. (While this is obviously a figurative use of the word "day" (yom), it points out that the word "day" (yom) does not necessarily need to be interpreted in a literal sense.) Furthermore, the order of the created events differs between the two complementary creation accounts:

The Order of Creation for Nature, Animals, and Humankind

Genesis 1:1-2:3................................................Genesis 2:4-22

7 "days" of creation.............................................Only 1 "day" of creation? (v. 4)

v.1 heavens and the earth....................................v. 4 heavens and earth (implied)
v.3 light
v.4 divided day from night
v.7 created firmament (the heavens)
v.9 the oceans collected and dry land revealed
v.12 creation of grasses, seed yielding herbs
and fruit trees
v.14 stars
v.16 sun and moon
v.20 ocean life and birds
v.24 land-based animal life
v.26 humankind (man and woman together).............v.7 the first man (male only)
God rests (Gen 2:2).............................................v.19 land-based animals and birds
........................................................................v.22 the first woman (female)

The land-based animals and birds are mentioned as created in both Gen 1:20, 24 and Gen 2:19. If these passages are literally true, then were animals and birds created before or after the first man? For this reason (and a number of other textual reasons), I do not believe the first two chapters are meant to be interpreted literally.

</font>[/QUOTE]Yes, I agree. And it's still a bad thing to misrepresent the scripture by demanding a 24-hour creation day when the scripture doesn't teach it. It's a worse thing to judge other believers by an extra-biblical opinion.

Yup. Sometimes it is hard to accept God's written word when it interferes with our religious opinions.

[ February 17, 2003, 08:44 PM: Message edited by: Baptist Believer ]

 

i believe they are literal "days" because the plants were made on the third "day" and the lights on the fourth. the insects on the sixth "day"... the plants would not have survived were they not normal days

Exod.20
[11] For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

Moses believed...

granted the days may not have been exactly the same length. the cubits might have been different too... but they were days. not years+

2Pet.3
[8] But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

is that what you mean? it is not more of an argument for converting days to thousands of years then it is for converting thousands of years into days...

 

The Bible is truth. In English The Authorized King James. The Bible is fact. I don't worry so much about the Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic because I have enough trouble with the English. My trouble is usually with what I do understand not what I don't understand. I am a Fundamentalist (although I have never believed in the "gap theory"). I do not worry to much about the thoughts of scolars for my comprehension of Scriptures. Days mean days to me. An interesting thought of tedays were 1,000 years Adam would not have lived to day seven God's day of rest which does not seem logical.