RJS over at Jesus Creed relates a letter he recently received, from which I quote here:
I agree ... that it is helpful to understand Chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis as mytho-historical. … My question relates to how to handle this issue when teaching my kids the Bible stories. My oldest is 5 yrs. old. She doesn't have any idea what "mytho-historical" means. To her, the story in Genesis 1 and 2 is no different from the resurrection story when I read it out of a kids' Bible stories book. One is naturally as historical as the other, in her mind.
To me, that is pretty interesting. Someone just reading the text without burden or prejudice, thinks that Genesis 1-2 sound like real events, just like the resurrection.
The letter continues:
Is it better to wait until kids are older to begin to discuss these issues? If not now, at what age, and what is a good way to raise it? And if I wait, do I set up a crisis of faith when she later learns that I don't really view Genesis 1 & 2 (and perhaps other passages) as history in the same way I view the other, central NT stories I've been teaching her.
I think you will set up a crisis of faith when she discovers this strange hermeneutic you have. My guess is that she will wonder why, if Genesis 1-2 are not actual history, you think the resurrection and other NT stories are.
I have to admit I wonder the same thing.
I think it smacks of what my theology professor used to refer to as “brush pile theology.” It is theology that is unintegrated with the whole of revelation. It’s what leads us to say that “this is historical and this is not” and then just leave the piles sitting there uncomfortably separated, sticking out a like a haystack in the Biltmore house. Everyone knows there is something wrong, but it’s at the Biltmore house, right? Surely they don’t make such a mistake. It’s an emperor with no clothes. But because some PhD from TopNotch U said it, people fall in line.
Now make no mistake. There are hard historical questions in the Bible. But Genesis 1-2 is not one of them. It could hardly be easier.
He ends with:
Any wise advice from others who've already confronted this issue with young kids would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Here’s my advice: Believe that Genesis 1-2 is actual history and teach your children to believe that. It brings several benefits.
First, you will be like Jesus and the rest of the biblical authors who believed that Genesis 1-2 were actual history, and that’s pretty good company to be in.
Second, you won’t have to deal with the burdens of a scientific community who can’t explain why things are the way they are, but you can rather recognize that things are the way they are because God created them with order just the way that he said he did. The reality is that there is too much in the “scientific community” that makes no sense in their worldview (and most of them know it). Only in the biblical worldview with a Creator God as revealed in Genesis 1-2 does the material world actually make sense.
Third, you won’t have to find some torturous explanation for your daughter as to why some of the Bible is worthy of your belief but other parts are not.
Simplistic? Sure
Out of touch with reality? According to some … some who are not omniscient, who have hard questions because we do not know everything.
Since we do not know everything, it seems a reach to assert that Genesis 1-2 is not actual history since there is nothing in either the text or the material world that would lead us to believe that.
So why not simply say that?
I don’t know …
2 comments:
A new Resurrection defined:
The first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the Gospel and moral teachings of Christ is on the web. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word, Law, Baptism, the Trinity and the Resurrection.
Using a synthesis of scriptural material from the Old and New Testaments, the Apocrypha , The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Nag Hammadi Library, and some of the worlds great poetry, it describes and teaches a single moral LAW, a single moral principle, and offers the promise of its own proof; one in which the reality of God responds directly to an act of perfect faith with a individual intervention into the natural world; 'raising up the man' correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries. Intended to be understood metaphorically, where 'death' is ignorance and 'Life' is knowledge, this experience, personal encounter of transcendent power and moral purpose is the 'Resurrection', and justification for faith. Here is where true morality, called righteousness begins.
Here then is the first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged. This new teaching delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition, that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable and 'extraordinary' evidence based truth embodied in action. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must now measure for itself, the reality of a new claim to revealed truth, a moral tenet not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof, an objective basis for moral principle and a fully rationally justifiable belief!
This is 'religion' without any of the conventional trappings of tradition. An individual, virtue-ethical conception, independent of all cultural perception in a single moral command, and the single Law finds it's expression of obedience within a new covenant of marriage. It requires no institutional framework or hierarchy, no churches or priest craft, no scholastic theological rational, dogma or doctrine and ‘worship’ requires only conviction, faith and the necessary measure of self discipline to accomplish a new, single, categorical moral imperative and the integrity and fidelity to the new reality.
If confirmed, this will represent a paradigm change in the moral and intellectual potential of human nature itself; untangling the greatest questions of human existence: consciousness, meaning, suffering, free will and evil. And at the same time addressing the most profound problems of our age.
Trials of this new teaching are open to all and under way in many countries. For those individuals who will question their own prejudices, who can imagine outside the historical cultural box, with the moral courage to learn something new, and test this for themselves, to stand against the stream of fashionable thought and spin, an intellectual and moral revolution is already under way, where the 'impossible' becomes inevitable, with the most potent Non Violent Direct Action any human being can take to advance peace, justice, change and progress.
Published [at the moment] only on the web, a typeset manuscript of this new teaching is available as a free [1.4meg] PDF download from a variety of sites including:
[www].energon.org.uk
The framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith agree with you:
"It pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, for the manifestation of the glory of His eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, in the beginning, to create, or make of nothing, the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good (chapter 4, paragraph 1)."
Post a Comment