How Has Modern Science Changed How We Understand the Bible?

by Steve Kindle

“By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.”
~Erasmus

What follows in this post is my personal reflection on Dr. Vick's post which ran yesterday on the Energion Publications blog (for which I am the editor). Although I hope he finds this compatible with his own view, he may not. He is only responsible for prodding me to think through some of the implications of what he wrote.

The heliocentric model of the universe changes everything.
Since the Copernican revolution, we can no longer accept the Ancient Near Eastern three-tiered universe with heaven “up there,” and Sheol “down below.” Paul’s vision of a man transported to “the third heaven” reveals a psychology steeped in that worldview. Elijah taken to heaven in a fiery chariot, and even the ascension of Jesus, can no longer be taken literally. Given the vastness of the universe, the psalmist’s question, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” takes on deepened meaning. Can we still speak of God “in the heavens,” or literally understand that “The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built.”? I think not.

The biological Theory of Evolution changes everything.
No longer can we think of the world as created in six days, or Bishop Ussher's 6,000 years ago, or the Creationist's 10,000. The creation narratives in Genesis can no longer be taken literally, but as a poetic ode to creation and the Creator. Adam and Eve can now be seen as a primordial myth that speaks to the human condition, not of the actual First Parents. The Flood has shrunk to the area surrounding the Black Sea about 12000 BCE. (The universality of flood stories can be traced back to the melting of the great ice sheet that covered most of the northern hemisphere at the same period, and how it affected its people.)

The only answer that literalists can give in response is that the Bible is the word of God and must take priority over any other presumed authority…regardless of the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. “The Bible says” trumps scientific findings.

Literalists do claim a kind of science on their side, Creation Science. They marshal “evidence” that no scientist in the academies supports, even continuing to cite long overturned arguments from John Whitcomb, Henry Morris, and George McCready Price. The Creation Science movement proved too embarrassing for many scientists of faith, because it was tied too closely to biblical arguments. They began the Intelligent Design movement and eschewed any taint of religion in their deliberations. However, virtually all are aligned with some form of Christian Evangelicalism or Fundamentalism, which drives their efforts, not pure science. They have yet to make significant inroads into the wider scientific community.

So what does the consensus scientific worldview do for biblical interpretation and theology?

• It removes biblical supernaturalism as an explanation of events.
• God’s transcendence is not physical (out there), but “wholly other.”
• Literalism is no longer the first and preferred reading.
• The biblical notions of sin and salvation (atonement) need to be understood as arising from the ancient milieu, and not appropriate today.
• The Bible, rather than being a scientific textbook, can be recognized as the record of a people trying to understand their world and their place in it. It is the people’s record, not God’s.
• The apocalyptic undergirding of the New Testament needs to be seen as a yearning for hope in a world gone mad, not as a timetable for the ages.
• It ends the dualism that turns the world into a battleground instead of a paradise.

What are some of the applications that can be made from these assertions?

It removes biblical supernaturalism as an explanation of events.
God can no longer be seen as acting from outside the cosmos upon the Earth shaping events and suspending natural law at will. Things have proceeded over the past 14.5 billion years in a natural fashion and continue to do so. We know that the Earth rotates about 25,000 miles per hour and orbits the sun, which is stationary (relative to the earth). The story of the battle for Jericho includes God causing the sun to stand still in the sky to allow for more daylight. This is a perfect example of the ancient worldview’s explanation for how Israel wins battles: God intervenes for them. This, for me, serves as an archetype for all such interventions.

God’s transcendence is not physical (out there), but “wholly other.”
By removing God from beyond the cosmos (heaven), we have not demoted God, but made God immanent—within all things. In certain ways, God is closer to humanity than before. Gone are such notions as “the Man upstairs,” “the Old Man in the sky,” and other figures of speech that make God remote and far removed from human life. God being intimately related to and involved with every aspect of life, from the smallest subatomic particle, to the fullness of the cosmos, makes everything sacred and gives humans motivation for proper care of creation.

Literalism is no longer the first and preferred reading.
Knowing that we are reading ancient documents that are informed by a worldview vastly different from our own, we can no longer accept their understanding at face value. Taking the text literally is to overlook this fact. We begin interpreting by asking what informed the author to understand the text in this way, and then compare it to how we find things in our world today.

The biblical notions of sin and salvation (atonement) need to be understood as arising from the ancient milieu, and not appropriate today.
Can you imagine anyone operating out of the modern worldview attaching the remedy for sin to blood atonement? The gods of the Ancient Near East were capricious and vengeful. In agrarian societies, the only thing they had to offer the gods to appease them were what they grew or the livestock they raised. They saw these things as an extension of themselves, and, in a way, the offering of themselves. Blood, life, in exchange for their lives.

Even the Bible comes against this notion from time to time. From Amos: I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. 

 Even the pagans such as King Nebuchadnezzar found peace with God away from blood atonement. From Daniel: Therefore, O king, may my counsel be acceptable to you: atone for your sins with righteousness, and your iniquities with mercy to the oppressed, so that your prosperity may be prolonged.”

Not all the atonement theories arising from the New Testament and later required a blood sacrifice for efficacy. Specifically, Luke sees salvation arising out of being faithful to the end, even as was Jesus, who models our means of salvation.

The Bible, rather than being a scientific textbook, can now be considered a record of a people trying to understand their world and their place in it. It is the peoples’ record, not God’s.
Rather than this being woeful, it is an amazing realization. Humans are capable of spiritual insights and profound realizations about the world and themselves. God will be seen as a participant in this, but the record is from humans. Therefore, for humans to engage the Bible as human to human is to do precisely what the ancient people were doing that resulted in the Bible. The tradition continues into our own time and much spiritual good is reaped in the process.

The apocalyptic undergirding of the New Testament needs to be seen as a yearning for hope in a world gone mad, not as a timetable for the ages.
Apocalyptic theology, that is, the understanding that God shapes all world history according to God’s will, and that good will ultimately triumph over evil, arose out of a need, indeed, a longing, that this is the case. I believe that God will ultimately prevail in securing a world typified by shalom, and I recognize this as a faith statement. But the notion of God superintending history, much as a mother hen, doesn’t give free will its due.

The Hebrew Bible is full of instances where God is depicted as “changing his mind.” First, with being sorry, actually repenting making humankind, and rectifying this by the genocide of the race. Then there is Moses pleading with God in the wilderness not to destroy Israel. God relents when Moses argues that the Egyptians will laugh at him. These and many other examples suggest that not all things are set in place “before the foundation of the world.” That the future is unknown and not predicable, as apocalyptic would have it.

It ends the dualism that turns the world into a battleground instead of a paradise.
Religious dualism is the idea that there are two supernatural forces diametrically opposed to one another vying for dominance. For nearly 4.5 billion years of the formation of planet Earth, down to our own day, dualism was irrelevant. Actually, the idea that there is God and an anti-god (Satan), is very new to humanity. In fact, the Hebrew Bible’s recording of the history of Israel from creation to the return from Babylonian exile got along without it. Satan, as known in the New Testament is absent. Dualism emerges in the Intertestamental period and flourishes in the New Testament. Many scholars believe that Jewish theologians were introduced to dualism during the Babylonian captivity with their exposure to dualistic Zoroastrianism. Dualism tends to divide people, institutions, and things into good or evil. Monism (the metaphysical and theological view that all is one, that there are no fundamental divisions) promotes world unity and peace and is the basis of Shalom.

Conclusion
We in the 21^st century have been given a marvelous inheritance in the Bible. If we can learn to view it as a human enterprise encapsulating the wisdom of a people who earnestly sought to find answers to the human predicament, we, too, will find our way out of darkness and into the light. But only if we are not imprisoned by an outmoded and now harmful worldview that would keep us from finding our own way.

Dr. David Alan Black Reviews My Book

I just finished reading Steve Kindle's new book, I'm Right and You're Wrong: Why we disagree about the Bible and what to do about it.

"The current landscape of biblical disagreement is literally worldwide," bemoans Steve, adding, "Many of us think our way is superior to most, if not all" (p. 1). He's right of course. I often ask my students this question: "If we have a perfect source [the Bible] and a perfect teacher [the Holy Spirit], then why do we disagree among ourselves so often?" The answer is obvious: It is we who are not perfect. None of us ever thinks perfectly logically, nor is any one of us ever completely filled with the Spirit. As Steve notes, "Reason is never 'pure' reason; it is always a product of how we perceive logic" (p. 17). 

What to do then? The book concludes with many helpful suggestions, a few of which I mention here (my words, not his):

• Be aware of our own attitudes and presuppositions.
• Recognize that some disagreement is inevitable.
• Let humility guide the discussion. Always.
• Read Scripture in light of its historical context.
• Let the Holy Spirit be our guide.
• Be open to change and even correction.
• Be willing to agree to disagree for the sake of the Gospel.

Steve notes that the goal is "...not to appear scholarly, or erudite, or to win arguments, but to follow Jesus as a faithful disciple" (p. 36). And that is a point, I think, on which all of us can agree. 

[Enegion Publication's] series is called Topical Line Drives. This one hits it out of the park.
*******************************************************************

Dr. Black is a world-class Greek scholar and author of one of the most popular texts in seminaries.  He teaches at Southeast Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.  His interest in my book is humbling.  Here's the link to his blog: http://daveblackonline.com/blog.htm. You'll have to scroll down a ways, or use Ctrl f and search for Steve Kindle.

Check Out My Latest Book--Please!

As of last week, my new book, I'm Right and You're Wrong: Why we disagree about the Bible and what to do about it, was published by Energion Publications. Although it isn't specifically about LGBTQI issues, it goes a long way in explaining how people can, and do, differ on major biblical issues. Here's a little of the Introduction:

How many times have you had a conversation with someone that involved a disagreement over the Bible? And how many times have these conversations led to interruptions of friendships or even extended family disputes? Some of these disputes have split congregations. Even the more mild disagreements can leave us perplexed.  Why is it that something so plain to one is so obviously unconvincing to others? This often leads us to search for ways to convince others through honing our interpretive skills, doing elaborate word studies, consulting scholarly commentaries and the like.  In the end, however, people don’t easily change their minds, and we are left to wonder why. 

This book differs from most in that rather than looking at how to interpret the Bible properly, we’ll examine the sources of disagreement among interpreters.  We all have our own ways of trying to understand the Bible and they are close to our hearts.  Many of us think our way is superior to most, if not all.  But we will not venture into who is right and who is wrong in our interpretations.   What concerns us here is why we interpret the way we do and what our attitude should be toward those with whom we disagree.

It's a short book. The average reader will finish it in about two hours. It's part of the Topical Line Drive series. The publisher describes books in this series as "direct and to the point...designed to demonstrate a point of scholarship or survey a topic directly, clearly, and and quickly."

There is now and always has been serious disagreement among Christians. This will likely never change. Disagreement isn't a bad thing; it helps us think through our own positions, and reminds us that no one is capable of getting everything right. The problem with disagreement comes when we are so convinced of our own rightness that we diminish and even disdain all other interpretations. This book is an effort to understand how disagreements can be useful in bringing people together, not tearing them apart. It explains why we disagree, that it's almost impossible for any two people to see things exactly the same, and why humility is our best partner in interpretation.

To see more about the book and how to order, here are a few links:
Energion Publications
Amazon Books
Barns and Noble and Nook

It's available in softcover ($4.99) and in the Kindle Reader format. ($.99)
Let me know what you think.

The Problem with an Infallible Bible: You're Not!

The late Harold Lindsell, a prominent Evangelical leader, stated that, "The very nature of inspiration renders the Bible infallible, which means that it cannot deceive us. It is inerrant in that it is not false, mistaken, or defective". (The Battle for the Bible. Zondervan, 1978, p.31)  The key phrase, "it cannot deceive us," is the source of the problem. Couple this with biblical literalism and the problem is compounded. For those who believe in infallibility and literalism believe they can read it essentially without error. "The Bible cannot deceive me; therefore, I am not deceived."

You may have wondered why conservative Christians (mostly the leaders) are so sure of themselves. Well, this is part of the explanation. "I understand (literally) what the Bible says, so I have every right to conclude that it is the truth, and those who disagree with me are wrong."  Wrong, even though they come from the same two understandings and approach the Bible the same way. Those who don't come from the same a priori starting point are wrong by definition.

Simply put, the problem with an infallible Bible is that for it to have any value, you need to be an infallible reader. Many have tried to wear the mantle of (practical) infallibility and crown their hubris by consigning to hell (in the most excessive examples) those who would disagree. The Roman Catholic Church relies on an infallible pope, although papal infallibility has been used only once since it was proclaimed in 1870 to make the Assumption of Mary into heaven an Article of faith.

The notion of Absolute Truth is also subject to the same problem of identifying just what it is. Since we are all, as humans, finite beings, we cannot comprehend Absolute Truth. We can only approach it. The absolute cannot dwell in the finite. This is not to say there is no Absolute Truth; only that it is not a helpful notion so long as we think knowing it is possible. So approaching the biblical text must be done in great humility, our conclusions must be open to adjustment at all times, and our openness to other points of view must be observed with respectful consideration. You may not end up with The Truth, but you will be practicing Christian charity. And that's a pathway to a more expansive understanding of the Bible than thinking you have already arrived will ever take you.