young_bible_boy9

a.k.a.- do two flaws, an entire argument kill??


GENESIS 1-11 AND MODERN SCIENCE

To claim that God created the world and all that exists is a matter of faith, grounded fundamentally in God's self-revelation (see Heb 11). At this level the opening chapters of Genesis are a confession of faith. At the same time,in witnessing to God's creative activity the biblical writers made use of the available knowledge of the natural world.
Israel had great interest in what we today would call "scientific" issues (see 1 Kings 4:33). These chapters are prescientific in the sense that they predate modern science, but not in the sense of having no interest in those types of questions. "Pre-scientific" knowledge is evident in God's use of the earth and waters in mediating creation (Gen. 1:11, 20, 24), the classification of plants into certain kinds and a comparable interest in animals, as well as the ordering of each day's creation. Despite claims to the contrary (often in the interest of combating fundamentalism), such texts indicate that Israel's thinkers were very interested in questions of the "how" of creation and not just questions of "who" and "why".

Israel's theologians used this kind of "scientific" knowledge to speak of creation. They recognized that the truth about creation is not generated simply by theological reflection; we must finally draw from various fields of inquiry in order to speak the full truth about the world. The key task, finally, becomes that of integrating materials from various fields into one coherent statement about the created order. In effect, Genesis invites every generation to engage in this same process.

Difficulties arise when it becomes evident that not everything in these chapters can be made congruent with modern knowledge about the world (recognizing that no field of endeavor has arrived at the point of full understanding). If our view of the Bible insists that all information in it, of whatever sort, must correspond to scientific reality, then we will have to engage in all sorts of exegetical antics to make it work. But if we recognize that those authors did not know everything about the world (e.g., a source for light independent from the luminaries; the age of the world), then we just recognize that and move on. We have to take all the additional knowledge we have gained or will gain about the world (e.g., some form of evolution) and integrate it with our confession about God the Creator.

We are not called to separate the theological material from the "scientific" material and rewrite the chapter from our own scientific perspectives (however much that task must be accomplished for other purposes). The Genesis text remains both an indispensable theological resource and an important paradigm on the way in which to integrate theological and scientific realities in a common search for the truth about the world.


- Terence Fretheim, one of the leading Pentateuch scholars, in the New Interpreter's Bible.


Ideas? Comments?

[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: young_bible_boy9 ]</p>

Kosh

Uh huh. "Pay no attention to the man behind
the curtain!"

[ March 02, 2002: Message edited by: Kosh ]</p>