Response to Comment
August 21, 2009
Arnold Sikkema made the following comment on the quotations from Gardiner Spring that I posted here a few days ago:
There is much one could say about Gardiner. Let me restrict myself to two points. If Genesis 2:1 ("Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.") is to be taken in a modern scientific sense, one must deny the clear evidence that volcanoes and supernovae occur. This is one of the many clues that in understanding Genesis (or any of Scripture), our current modernist and enlightenment notions of truth -- in which the scientific, chronological, journalistic, technical, materialistic are elevated -- do not serve us well. Gardiner writes, "It has been well remarked that, 'the collision is not between the Bible and nature, but between the Bible and natural philosophers.'" Interesting how hermeneutics is left out of the picture altogether, as if there is no role for theological inquiry (or for preaching). I agree that there is no dispute between the Bible and nature, but the dispute is not between the Bible itself and with natural philosophy (i.e. "science") either -- it is between Biblical interpretation and science. (See Ben Faber's 25 May 2009 post "Humble Realism and Reformed Hermeneutics" on our blog [which is at reformedacademic.blogspot.com] for more about this.)
First of all, thanks for the comment. I disagree with pretty much everything you said after the first sentence.
First of all, you say that our current notions of 'truth' do not serve us well in interpreting Scripture. What this is saying, in effect, is that the ancients had a different standard of 'truth' and evaluating 'truth' than we do. This is an assertion, not an argument, and it's an assertion that, if it is to be accepted, must be backed up with evidence. Where is the evidence that the writers of Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, had a different standard of truth, or a different definition of truth? If this is the case, how can we make any sense whatsoever of Scripture? In 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul tells Timothy (and by extension, all ministers of the Word), 'Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, and who correctly handles the word of truth.' If there was a correct way of handling the word of truth in Paul's time, surely that standard is still applicable today, otherwise any attempt at discerning and explaining the truth would be completely meaningless, and I might as well stop preaching, and just let everyone come up with their own interpretations.
Truth is not something that varies. It is a universal standard. Four thousand years ago, if I would have told my buddy, 'Wow, the sky sure is green today,' he would have looked at me in the same way that someone today would, and he may have told me to seek professional help. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever gone beyond making assertions about the differing notions of 'truth' that have supposedly existed throughout history, and provided evidence that such is actually the case, particularly when it comes to the Word of God, which proclaims again and again that there is an objective, eternal truth that remains constant throughout the history of mankind. Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence that the ancients were very precise in their scientific analysis, in the areas of mathematics and astronomy, for instance.
'Sanctify them by the truth,' Jesus said to the Father, 'Your Word is truth' (John 17:17).
Jesus said to Pilate, 'You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.' 'What is truth?' Pilate asked (John 18:37,38). Quite frankly, when it comes to the idea of 'truth,' I'd rather side with Jesus than Pilate.
As for your use of Genesis 2:1(and what you call 'reading it in a modern scientific sense') in support of your argument, you're creating a straw man. I've never heard anyone argue that this verse means that there has been no change in creation or addition within creation since God finished His work on the sixth day. God finished His creating work. The earth was complete, and it was 'very good.' Within that finished created order, there is growth and change, of course! But when God rested on the seventh day, His work of creation was done. There's no 'modern, scientific' interpretation, there's no 'ancient interpretation,' there's just a statement of fact that remains true and will remain true. Your use of the verse doesn't back up your argument at all.
There is much one could say about Gardiner. Let me restrict myself to two points. If Genesis 2:1 ("Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.") is to be taken in a modern scientific sense, one must deny the clear evidence that volcanoes and supernovae occur. This is one of the many clues that in understanding Genesis (or any of Scripture), our current modernist and enlightenment notions of truth -- in which the scientific, chronological, journalistic, technical, materialistic are elevated -- do not serve us well. Gardiner writes, "It has been well remarked that, 'the collision is not between the Bible and nature, but between the Bible and natural philosophers.'" Interesting how hermeneutics is left out of the picture altogether, as if there is no role for theological inquiry (or for preaching). I agree that there is no dispute between the Bible and nature, but the dispute is not between the Bible itself and with natural philosophy (i.e. "science") either -- it is between Biblical interpretation and science. (See Ben Faber's 25 May 2009 post "Humble Realism and Reformed Hermeneutics" on our blog [which is at reformedacademic.blogspot.com] for more about this.)
First of all, thanks for the comment. I disagree with pretty much everything you said after the first sentence.
First of all, you say that our current notions of 'truth' do not serve us well in interpreting Scripture. What this is saying, in effect, is that the ancients had a different standard of 'truth' and evaluating 'truth' than we do. This is an assertion, not an argument, and it's an assertion that, if it is to be accepted, must be backed up with evidence. Where is the evidence that the writers of Scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit, had a different standard of truth, or a different definition of truth? If this is the case, how can we make any sense whatsoever of Scripture? In 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul tells Timothy (and by extension, all ministers of the Word), 'Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, and who correctly handles the word of truth.' If there was a correct way of handling the word of truth in Paul's time, surely that standard is still applicable today, otherwise any attempt at discerning and explaining the truth would be completely meaningless, and I might as well stop preaching, and just let everyone come up with their own interpretations.
Truth is not something that varies. It is a universal standard. Four thousand years ago, if I would have told my buddy, 'Wow, the sky sure is green today,' he would have looked at me in the same way that someone today would, and he may have told me to seek professional help. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever gone beyond making assertions about the differing notions of 'truth' that have supposedly existed throughout history, and provided evidence that such is actually the case, particularly when it comes to the Word of God, which proclaims again and again that there is an objective, eternal truth that remains constant throughout the history of mankind. Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence that the ancients were very precise in their scientific analysis, in the areas of mathematics and astronomy, for instance.
'Sanctify them by the truth,' Jesus said to the Father, 'Your Word is truth' (John 17:17).
Jesus said to Pilate, 'You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.' 'What is truth?' Pilate asked (John 18:37,38). Quite frankly, when it comes to the idea of 'truth,' I'd rather side with Jesus than Pilate.
As for your use of Genesis 2:1(and what you call 'reading it in a modern scientific sense') in support of your argument, you're creating a straw man. I've never heard anyone argue that this verse means that there has been no change in creation or addition within creation since God finished His work on the sixth day. God finished His creating work. The earth was complete, and it was 'very good.' Within that finished created order, there is growth and change, of course! But when God rested on the seventh day, His work of creation was done. There's no 'modern, scientific' interpretation, there's no 'ancient interpretation,' there's just a statement of fact that remains true and will remain true. Your use of the verse doesn't back up your argument at all.
Arnold Sikkema says:
August 24, 2009 @ 17:11 — Reply
[Para. 1] Thanks for interacting with the first of my two points. It’s apparent that I wasn’t clear enough. One thing that didn’t help was that upon submitting my comment, two paragraph breaks separating my two points disappeared, which is why I am now numbering my paragraphs. [Para. 2] All I am saying is that we must not accept uncritically our culture’s (default modernist) definition of truth. By this I mean the notion of truth which arose after the scientific revolution, which ultimately claims that science is the only legitimate arbiter of truth. (In many circles of today’s culture it has been displaced by a “post-modernist” notion which claim all truth is relative, but this was before Rev. Gardiner Spring’s time, and so let’s leave post-modernism aside for now.) That is, something is considered “true” (on this view) if it is scientifically demonstrable, and “truth” is a category which does not apply to poetry or fiction literature or emotion (e.g.). Thus I maintain the truth of Genesis 2:1 (which I referred to only because it was included in your quotations from Rev. Gardiner Spring [end of your sixth paragraph], not a text I was trying to use to relativize truth), without it having to be in some sense a statement which (in principle) is subject to, or perhaps in opposition to, scientific verification; it appeared to me that Spring was attempting to do so when he wrote: “They [i.e the Scriptures, particularly Genesis 2:1] convey the thought, that creation was the matured act of God; it was performed by a word, and under the direct and immediate influence of a divine command.” [Para. 3] My point was that if in fact we wish to insist that Genesis 2:1 must be read as if it implies that all things which currently exist were present in their mature form from the moment that God spoke His decree of creation (which I am suggesting is a late-modernist way of interpreting what Genesis 2:1 says), one must either be willing to allow science (or perhaps just the common senses) to revise what we mean by “mature” or “all things” (e.g. volcanoes and supernovae occur after creation), or to care not one whit about the evidences that volcanoes and supernovae occur. Simply saying the Genesis 2:1 is a plain “statement of fact” actually calls the question: what is the fact of the matter, then? I am suggesting, however, that Genesis 2:1 doesn’t have to be read in this way at all in order for it to be true. It is simply bringing closure to this first of Scripture’s several creation stories by repeating Genesis 1:1 in a poetic “sandwich” style. It does not mean anything about whether God later brought about other stars or islands, or about whether there were any tree rings or geological strata or whether Adam had a belly button; these sorts of things were not in view as they are not important in the redemptive historical narrative which Scripture is. [Para. 4] Furthermore, your appeal to “statement of fact” is actually an example of a modernist notion of truth, whereas Reformed hermeneutics makes it clear that there is no such thing as a brute fact – all so-called “facts” are culturally embedded within theological or scientific (etc.) networks of meaning. (In science, this was shown by late-modern philosophers like Kuhn & Polanyi, as well as theologians like Kuyper, explicating the human-subjective element.) I am not denying that Scripture contains statements of propositional truth, but that what the face-value truth is might not always be what one, with today’s cultural baggage (including modernism, scientism, young-earth creationism, westernism, etc.), might immediately think one is being confronted with. Thus the literary, historical, cultural context of scripture must be carefully studied in its own right, while working very hard to distance oneself from what might skew one’s thinking. This is the kind of thing we expect from our ministers and professors in their exegetical task, not the imposition of artificial layers of meaning of Scripture – however tradition – upon diligent scientific investigations which seek to uncover the works of God’s hands for His glory and the benefit of humanity. [Para. 5] For more background on the epistemological shifts of recent centuries, see Freda Oosterhoff, “Integrating Faith and Learning”, available at http://covenantteacherscollege.com/teachers/file2.pdf .