Time Immortal

Though it confirms the obvious, it never hurts to reflect that the more one explores early Christianity, the more one will find that the teachings and traditions of the early Church can only lead one in a single direction: toward Catholicism.

As anyone who has studied the New Testament or the Gospel of John knows, modern Biblical scholars love to quote the early Church Father Clement of Alexandria’s comment that the Gospel of John is a “spiritual Gospel.” It is interesting that you never see the similar comments of the great biblicist, Origen, who had this to say:

“No one can grasp the meaning of the Gospel (of John) unless he has rested on the breast of Jesus, and unless he has received from Him Mary, who becomes his mother also.” (Origen, Commentary on John, 1:6)

All truth, in and outside of Scripture, is found in the Church, and the degree to which we part with Rome is the degree to which we part from the fullest revelation of Christ.

Update: Welcome, Way of the Fathers readers!

Charles Tysoe writes in with a follow-up to my response to a few of his comments from a while back. I’m going to break up his message a bit and respond to it in a more inter-linear fashion, although the good Reader can rest assured that the entirety of what Charles‘ message will be included in this post. He covers a few different topics, however, which I would prefer to address as they arise.

[7] But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
[8] or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
[9] Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this?
[10] In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of all mankind.

Thanks for responding.

I thought after I sent that email that I should have looked up “message-incident” again to make sure I had the phrase right; thanks for clarifying and that is indeed the one I did in fact search for.

Would I find it, for instance in the Poetics of Aristotle?

Is not Aristotle essentially a heathen philospher? Was it not Aristotelian methodology that plagued Catholic Middle Ages Scholarship and led in part to the controversy involving Galilei Galileo’s works?

I wish you and/or DOL would make clear the source and rationale for “message incident” since it seems of murky pedigree and since DOL hangs such great weights from this small wire. He claims to be an Evangelical, and is a member of ETS. Can he point to other present or past members of this association and specific examples of this principle in action? Otherwise we have just you and DOL (and perhaps Aristotle) as advocating this system. That’s a very small sample space.

Aristotle was indeed a pagan philosopher, but I don’t think he had as much to do with the Galileo affair as did Ptolemy, all things considered. Also, I feel I should caution both the Reader, in general, and Charles in particular, against the automatic dismissal of non-Christian philosophers. Even in the Bible, God imparts blessings and wisdom to His chosen people through pagans and non-believers. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament give us examples of this. It should also be noted that St. Paul often quotes from non-Jewish and non-Christian poetic or philosophical sources.

In the end, what matters is what is true (Philippians 4:8). Whether we arrive at this by a source from within Christendom or without, what ultimately matters is what is true. And if there is in Aristotelean philosophy something that is true, or which enables us to better understand some aspect of the truth of the Lord, then we ought to pursue that thing.

I mentioned, previously, that the “message-incident” principle draws heavily, I think, upon Aristotle. That was a comment made out of personal opinion rather than out of specific knowledge of the fact on my part; it may well be that there is absolutely no Aristotelean influence in the principle itself. I was remarking on what seemed to be a similarity to me between the Message-Incident Principle and the notion of accidentals that inform the Catholic understanding of Eucharist.

In the Eucharist, we have the host, which at a glance appears to be a thin wafer of unleavened bread. However, this is not the sum total of its nature, nor is this an accurate picture of its nature. A separation needs to take place in our understanding of it, for it is actually the Real Presence of Christ Jesus, and retains only the accidentals (shape, taste, etc.) of the bread which it formerly was. The Message-Incident Principle doesn’t exactly mirror this understanding, but the idea is similar: a separation has to take place in our understanding of the text of the Bible, in that we need to be able to look at the message of faith conveyed by the text separate from the incidental events or details given by the text.

Previously, I gave the example of Ephesians 5, and how when we interpret this passage it is necessary to separate the “incident”al aspects of the text — some of which can seem sexist at first — from the theological “message” that St. Paul is attempting to convey, by illustrating the relationship of Christ to the Church through the imagery of the relationship between husband and wife. The purpose of the passage is not to convey a somewhat sexist message, nor is the purpose of this passage to present an improper model of the relationship between husband and wife; it is to present a model of the way we relate to Christ, and Christ to the community of His faithful. But to understand as much, we need to separate, categorically, the teaching from the imagery used to present it.

I will cover this in greater detail when I get to that part of my review of Denis O. Lamoureux’s Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution. The first part of that review, which looks at Denis’ examination of analytical categories, should be going up later today, provided that I don’t get too bogged down in other tasks.

How would this method, if laid out in parallel, compare to the current evangelical standard, the “Grammatical-Historical” method?

Let’s see if we can establish a comparison here. As I understand it, the Grammatical-Historical Method is structured as follows:

“Interpreting grammatically

• The historical-critical method assumes that words and expressions have a relatively stable meaning during given periods of history. Therefore, we begin by taking what we can determine as the normal, everyday meaning of the words, phrases, and sentences to the extent possible. In other words, our interpretation must correspond to the words and grammar in the text in a reasonable way. Otherwise, the interpreter could assign meaning of his own without objective control. The Bible would become a horoscope of vague sayings we try to plug into our lives however we are able.
  • Most of the Bible can be easily interpreted by simply taking the language (either in the original or translation) in the usual way (Jn. 3:36; Acts 1:11). In other words, if the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.
  • A plain sense reading should not be confused with a literalistic interpretation. We should allow for figures of speech (Mk. 1:5; Lk. 22:19).
  • If a passage contains symbols or a special literary genre this should be indicated in the text, either by textual cues, or because symbolism is required in order to make sense of the text. Most symbols are explained by the Bible itself (Rev. 1:9-20)

Interpreting historically

• - Historical interpretation means that we take into account the historical background of the author and the recipients as possible. The Bible was written to common people, and is understandable to anyone. However, it was written thousands of years ago to a different culture. Therefore, as modern readers, we have to try to recover a general sense of the meaning of words, phrases and concepts in the ancient cultures.  These phrases are addressed in Scripture primarily to the Hebrew and Greco-Roman culture of the first century.
  • We are not interested at first in the question, “What does it mean to me?” but rather, “what did it mean to those whom it was originally written?”
    • - Rev. 2:12,13 - Pergamum was the center of the worship of Aesclepius.
    • - I Cor. 11:4-6 - Shorn hair was typical of Aphrodite priestess-prostitutes; shaven heads were typical of convicted adulteresses (vs. 5).
  • Use Bible dictionaries or other sources to discover customs, money, geography, etc. Then
    find a corresponding meaning in our culture.
    • - Good Samaritan (Lk. 10); 2 Denarii (Mk. 6:37); 50,000 Drachma (Acts 19:19)
    • - Pharisees’ teaching on the relationship between illness and sin (Mark 2; John 9:1) “

Conversely, the Message-Incident Principle is structured thusly:

Message

• Divine Theology
• Inerrant and Infallible

Incident

• Ancient Science
• Ancient Phenomenonological Perspective

“This approach contends that in order to reveal spiritual truths as effectively as possible to the ancient peoples, the Holy Spirit used their ancient phenomenological perspective of nature. That is, instead of confusing or distracting the biblical writers and their readers with modern scientific concepts, God descended to their level and employed the science-of-the-day. Similar to the central message in the Kenotic Hymn, the Creator humbled Himself through the use of ancient human ideas about nature in the revelatory process. Therefore, passages in the Bible referring to the physical world feature both a Message of Faith and an incidental ancient science. According to this interpretive principle, Biblical inerrancy and infallibility rest in the Divine Theology, and not in statements referring to nature. Wualifying ancient science as “incidental” does not imply that it is unimportant. The science in Scripture is vital for transporting spiritual truths. It acts as a vessel similar to a cup that delivers “living waters” (John 4:10). However, the word “incidental” carries meanings of “that which happens to be alongside” and “happening in connection with something more important.” In other words, the ancient science in Scripture is “alongside” the “more important” Message of Faith.” (Denis O. Lamoureux, Evolutionary Creation, pp. 110-111)

Now, how do these two things compare?

For starters, I want to comment on something tangential. It has always struck me as a point of some curiosity that evangelicals, who profess to be true “Biblical Christians,” tend also to not be Eucharistic Christians. Indeed, evangelicals tend to set themselves very much against Eucharistic Theology. Which is, I content, very odd for an element of Christianity which purports to interpret the Bible according to the maxim: “if the plain sense makes sense, seek no other sense.”

With all due respect to my evangelical bretheren, the plain sense of e.g. John 6, Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, and 1 Corinthians 11 is that the bread we break in the meal at the altar is meant to be, and become, the literal and true Precious Body and Blood of Christ. He gives us His own flesh to eat, and His own blood to drink, in memory of Him and of His sacrifice for our sins…and we fail to discern Him in the bread and wine at our eternal peril. That is the plain meaning of the text, and yet evangelicals do not seem to interpret it thusly. This suggests to me that perhaps the default hermeneutic that evangelicals employ, the Grammatical-Historical Method, is somewhat subjective and arbitrary.

Thus, the problem with insisting on the use of literal-ish hermeneutics, and with insisting that Scripture be taken at its “plain meaning”, is that nobody really does that with any kind of consistency. Let me put that more plainly: no Christian ever takes Scripture at its plain meaning at every opportunity — indeed, many of us are often guilty of a certain hypocrisy when we insist upon just such an approach. More often than not, what we really mean when we insist on taking things at their plain meaning is: “let us use my interpretation of Scripture; let us take it at what I say its meaning is.” A similar fault exists with the evangelical concept of letting Scripture “self-interpret.” And for this reason, the grammatical aspect of the method actually exists in contradiction of the historical aspect.

There’s really no two ways about it: if our hermeneutic is to always take Scripture at its most obvious meaning, on a passage-by-passage basis, then we should all be Eucharistic Christians in light of John 6. That we are not all Eucharistic Christians means that we do not always take Scripture at its plain meaning; we only do so when it is convenient to the point we are making.

In contrast, the Message-Incident Principle presents us with a better approach. It allows us to respect the historical context of what is written in Scripture, which the Grammatical-Historical Method also purports to do, but lets us do so in a way that prioritizes the message of faith contained within the text, rather than the incidental aspects of the text itself. It allows us to look past the cultural context that is apparent in many passages of Scripture (see again the earlier example of Ephesians 5), and to look to the spiritual lesson that God, through the divine inspiration of the authors of the Biblical texts by the Holy Spirit, is seeking to impart to us.

And — this is the key point, I think — it allows us to do so with greater consistency. The key flaw of the grammatical aspect of the Grammatical-Historical Method is that it assumes that the Spirit necessarily intended for all of Scripture to be taken at its plain meaning. There is little to no support for this conjecture within Scripture itself, and little to no support for it in the writings of the early theologians and Doctors of the Church. Because of this lack of support, the notion of “plain meaning” in evangelical grammatical interpretation tends to take on the form, as previously noted, of subjective personal opinion about the text, even if this opinion is actually contradicted by other parts of the Bible.

In contrast, the Message-Incident Principle proposes that our focus in interpreting the Biblical text should be on the message of faith conveyed in the text. This seems reasonable, since the principal intent of the Bible is to bring to humanity a message of faith, revelation, and salvation. Notably, however, this interpretive method does not attempt to shoehorn the text of Scripture into a literal or “plain meaning” framework that it may not necessarily belong in. The priority is not on the raw text itself, which contains a mixture of divine revelation and ancient human understanding, but on the revelation proper.

Of course, this opens up the question of how we sort out those passages meant to be taken literally from those which are not meant to be taken as such. That’s an interesting discussion in and of itself, though not one I will verge into at this time. After all, I have just gone into the Message-Incident Principle more than I intended to, and I want to retain something unique for my review of Denis’ book’s fourth chapter.

As to other examples of the principle “in action,” I cannot say: it may be a newer thing. But it should also be noted that a newer thing, if it is a correct thing, is a correct thing first and foremost, regardless of its age or lack thereof.

What is the warrant for privelging the scientific method as the hermeneutical sieve for Genesis?

I feel I should correct Charles on one point here: science is not priveleged above Scripture in Evolutionary Creationism. If anything, the “Two Books” — God’s Words and God’s Works — are regarded as equals, at least as far as their capacity for revelation is concerned. Also, what each Book reveals to us is different: the Bible reveals God directly, and Jesus, and the promise and hope of salvation. Creation, and by extension science, reveals the natural works which the Lord has made, which tell and proclaim His glory (Psalm 19:1) and impart, to those who ask it of them, wisdom and truth about the one whose design is reflected in every aspect of the world and all the Universe (Job 12:7-9).

But as it is, there are two principal “warrants” from which we derive a sense of the importance of being able to understand the harmony which must exist between the discoveries of science and the revelations of Scripture.

The first “warrant” is an old teaching indeed, from St. Augustine of Hippo. In his book The City of God (or get it for Kindle!), St. Augustine notes that as Christians confronted with new discoveries in the field of science and “in matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision … we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.” (Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, pp. 41)

The saint adds additional warnings later in the book. He cautions, for instance, that we should let “no one think that, because the Psalmist says, He established the Earth above the uater, we must use this testimony of Holy Scripture against these people who engage in learned discussions about the weight of the elements. They are not bound by the authority of our Bible; and, ignorant of the sense of these words, they will more readily scorn our sacred books than disavow the knowledge they have acquired by unassailable arguments or proved by the evidence of experience.” (Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, pp. 47-48)

He likewise notes, in what seems almost a prophetic vision of the scientific ignorance of Young Earth Creationsts today, that “someone may ask: ‘Is not Scripture opposed to those who hold that heaven is spherical, when it says, who stretches out heaven like a skin?’ Let it be opposed indeed if their statement is false…. But if they are able to establish their doctrine with proofs that cannot be denied, we must show that this statement of Scripture about the skin is not opposed to the truth of their conclusions.” (Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, p. 59)

Augustine is not attempting here to undermine the validity of Scripture, but is rather attempting to warn would-be evangelists that there is more to know than what is taught within its pages. The Bible does not discuss every aspect of the physical world, nor should it: it is not a book of science, but is instead a book of faith. And it is not a bludgeon to be used to shout down the reasonable discoveries of researchers and scientists either; it is a revelation of truth, but there are other things not contained within its pages which are likewise true, and known to be true either from demonstration or experience.

Which brings us to the second “warrant,” a more modern writing: Truth Cannot Contradict Truth, an address given by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In a way, the name says it all: the revealed truth of Scripture and the discovered truths that are the fruits of scientific research do not and cannot contradict each other. If both are true, then they must be compatible and even complementary.

Which is what St. Augustine was getting at in The City of God. It is ludicrous to assume that the saint thought, for one minute, that Scripture was diminished, supplanted, or rendered invalid or untruthful by the discoveries of scientists. At the same time, it is obvious that Augustine could see, plainly, that it was obvious that those same researchers could and would discover things about the nature of the world which were truthful. Augustine understood that humanity is constantly learning new things about the world in which it lives, and that Scripture was written by men less learned about such things, who necessarily wrote with within the framework of their own limited understandings.

And he knew that the truth of revelation could not and would not be contradicted by the truths discovered by continuing inquiry into the nature and shape of the world…but he also understood that if Christians who were ignorant about the sciences and too eager to present Scripture as the sole source of truth attempted to evangelize to those who were wiser about nature, two things would happen: souls would be lost, and Christ would be ridiculed.

Let us look at the various things which Augustine warned would happen to “reckless and incompetent [and scientifically ignorant] expounders of Holy Scripture” and see if his predictions came true at all:

1. non-Christians know something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge is held to as being certain from reason and experience?
2. people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn?
3. an ignorant individual is derided?
4. people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men?
5. reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture…are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books?
6. to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion?

I submit that the answers to these predictions are as follows:

1. Absolutely, without a doubt. One need not be a Christian to be a competent researcher in a scientific field, to conduct good and honest scientific study, or to make accurate and truthful scientific findings.
2. Absolutely. Read any debate on Young Earth Creationism, on any web-forum without serious membership requirements, and you will see this exact phenomenon taking place.
3. Ditto.
4. Ditto.
5. Ditto. Or check out TalkOrigins and the comprehensive list of rebuttals to ludicrous Young Earth Creationist claims archived there.
6. See #2.

So while it is important to not prioritize science above Scripture, it is likewise important to refrain from taking the Answers In Genesis approach of using Scripture as a bludgeon against the legitimate discoveries of science. To do the former is at once heretical and near-blasphemous. To do the latter, I submit, imperils not only the souls of those who hear a foolishly-given message and reject it, but also the souls of the foolish evangelists themselves.

Regarding the Scripture from Job (and also, for instance, the nineteenth Psalm); there is no reference there about the so-called “fossil record” teaching us about the mind or the ways of God; or the “Big Bang” theory about unobserved events in the pat; or about “homology” or any other so-called “proofs” of evolution. Evolution consists primarily of speculations about the unobserved past; morever, death and suffering and disease are the method, by Darwin’s own confession, by which the Creator perfects his creation. This is contrary to the character of God and also to the Bible teaching that God finished from his work of creating, a rest that persists until now, and that his completed creation was “very good”.

Actually — and here we are getting into the topic of another article I was meaning to write — Charles is quite incorrect about evolutionary theory and about the nature of God in relation to death and suffering. A paper I wrote a couple of years ago kind of hints at this, and I’m not inclined to go into too much additional detail here because it would, of course, spoil what is yet to come.

But let us at least consider one quick point. Christ Jesus is the Word (c.f. John 1), and in that understanding we must likewise understand that the entirety of the Word of God — the Bible — points to Christ. From the first word of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible, to the last word of the last book of the last chapter, all of Scripture points to Jesus and His salvific promise. Which means, in turn, that all of Scripture points to the sacrifice of Christ, and His death on the cross for our sins. Which in turn means that all of the Bible, even from the very opening of the Book of Genesis, points to the death of Christ on the Cross and His glorious resurrection and ascension into Heaven.

Which means that from the very beginning, death was a part of God’s plan for His Son, who came to Earth and was born of Mary as a human being. Which must mean that from the very beginning, death — the death of the physical body — was a part of God’s plan. Were it not a part of His plan, we could not say that all of Scripture points to Christ; we could only say that almost all of Scripture points to Him. And since He is Scripture — the Word, the Logos — “almost all” just doesn’t cut it.

The fact of the matter is: God did perfect His creations through suffering and death. Or, perhaps more accurately, God assured the eternal perfection of His creation, though we who yet live have not been perfected yet, through the suffering and death of His son, Jesus, whose sacrifice had both a temporal and eternal component to it. And from the very first moments of creation, this was God’s intent for His creation.

As to Charles‘ assertion about how evolutionary theory is mostly just speculation, that is almost a comment which is not worth responding to. Anyone who cares to see it will find that there is actually quite a lot of evidence for evolution (that hyperlink offers but a small and cursory sampling) — but with Christians who promote a false dichotomy between science and Scripture, no evidence is sufficient. It’s rather the same phenomenon as one sees in atheists: evidence is demanded, God obliges with…say…a miraculous healing, and the atheist(s) in question shrug and say that were God truly extant, He would not have healed just one person. Some would call this “moving the goalposts.”

It should also be noted that modern evolutionary science has largely abandoned Darwin’s initial conjectures; Darwin today is little more than a straw-man for Young Earthers to attack in lieu of attempting to contravene solid evidence for sound theories.

I apppreciate you are going to review the book chapter by chapter, but if you answer please don’t repeat the book because I am doing the same thing myself.

What are the illustrations you contributed to the book?

Chuck Tysoe

Well, I did throw in one reference from the book, good Reader, so I do hope that Chuck will forgive me that much. As to which illustrations I contributed, there are three of them (and all of them are attributed in the book). They are on pages 108, 116, and 362.

One was of the “three-tiered universe,” the cosmological model presented in the Bible. Another was a line-art rendering of an ancient Babylonian “map of the world,” which demonstrates what the authors of Scripture are talking about when they refer to the “circle of the Earth.”

The last one was a demonstration of evolutionary mutations in chicken wings caused my augmentations in certain enzymes in the chick embryo. Some augmentations caused rather absurd and unfortunate deformities to the wings, while others resulted in the chickens being hatched with “arms,” complete with wrists and fingers.

Fascinating stuff.

I’ll come right out and say it: I hope that none of my Readers take the Book of Genesis 100% literally.

I mean that. But I should also clarify.

I hope, for instance, that my Readers take Genesis literally where the messages of faith it delivers are concerned. I hope that my Readers believe what is taught in Genesis about how all the world, and all the Universe, is the creation of God, and that life arose on Earth through the ordination and sustenance of God. I hope that my Readers believe that creation is “very good,” and that human beings are the pinnacle of God’s creation, made in His image and likeness. I hope my Readers believe that the complementarity of male and female, of men and women, is a part of the design of God, and is intended to give image to His love for the world by the unique unity it is designed to evoke.

I hope that my Reader derives very strong affirmation for his or her faith from Genesis, in other words, and that the book itself imparts important messages of faith to the Reader.

On the other hand, I do not hope that the good Reader looks to Genesis as a historical account. In fact, not only do I not hope this, I actively hope against it. I hope that none of my Readers thinks the world is only a few thousand years old, that humanity preceded all the other creatures, or that dinosaurs and humanity co-existed for a time. And I hope that my Readers do not look to Genesis for their cosmological model of the Universe.

The Cosmological Model of the Ancient Hebrews

It’s this last point that I’m going to focus on in today’s discussion, because it serves as an example of a few things. First, by looking at the cosmological model presented in Genesis, and by comparing it against what we know today about the structure of the heavens, we can see that the descriptions of the structure of the world, and of the Universe, that appear in Genesis are not meant to be taken literally, as they are reflective of an Ancient Near Eastern understanding of such things only. Even more importantly, however, we will see that even most Christians are not total Biblical literalists, not even the most ardent Young Earth Creationists.

Because if they were completely, totally, 100% literal in their interpretation of the text of Genesis and the cosmological model presented therein (and through the whole of the Bible, as well), they would assert that the Universe is structured like this:

This is an earlier draft of an image I re-constructed in Photoshop for Dr. Denis O. Lamoureux’s book Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution. The published version is a bit different, but this version contains all the important elements, and so will suffice. Let’s review what we see in this image.

First off, we have the firmament (Genesis 1:6-8,14-17,20, Psalm 19:1, Psalm 150:1, Ezekiel 1:22-26, Ezekiel 10:1, Daniel 12:3, Sirach 43:1,8), which separates the waters above it from the waters below it (Genesis 1:7).

Embedded in the firmament are the Sun, Moon, and all the stars — the lights of the heavens which separate day from night (Genesis 1:14-15,17). And the heavens are contained within the firmament; they are of the firmament (Genesis 1:20, Psalm 19:1).

This firmament, incidentally, is a hard dome, a fixed cosmological structure. The very word — firmament — implies (and, in Hebrew, actually means) something solid, something fixed. If one is completely literal in one’s interpretation of Genesis, there is no room whatsoever to argue that the firmament can be explained away as the great expanse of space; the word itself has a different meaning.

Excursus: What is the firmament? As noted previously, this is a cosmological structure which appears all through Scripture. The word is rooted in the Hebrew word raqa, which means “to flatten,” “stamp down,” “spread out,” or “hammer out.”

Notice a common theme there? Flattening, stamping, spreading, and hammering are all actions one applies to a physical object, and then a solid one. This is especially true of hammering and stamping. The nuance of the Hebrew word raqia (which we translate as “firmament”) is thus one of something solid, rather than of something expansive.

We see this elsewhere in Scripture, it should be noted.

“Exodus 39:3 and Isa 40:19 use raqa for pounding metals into thin plates, and Num 16:38 employs riqqua (broad plate) in a similar context. The verb raqa is even found in a passage referring to the creation of the sky, which is understood to be a firm surface like a metal. Job 37:18 asks, ‘Can you join God in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?’ (c.f. Exod 24:10, Job 22:14, Ezek 1:22)” (taken from: Denis O. Lamoueux, Evolutionary Creation, pp. 123)

Let us also remember: “firmament” is an English translation of the Hebrew term. Its root, ‘firm,’ implies solidity and hardness. The very word itself implies a solid structure. Something like is all well and good for referring to the firmament as “an expanse,” but that simply goes to show that Strong’s Concordance is hardly infallible: the Hebrew word which translates into “firmament” — raqia, implies something solid, and has always (until relatively recently) been understood as such by the Church.

And this same principle, it should be noted, can be applied to Strong’s treatment of “foundations” — in which the Concordance attempts to whitewash the solidity implied by the Hebrew words that we translate as such. Job 26:11 and 2 Samuel 22:8 refer to the pillars or foundations of the heavens, while other passages (Deuteronomy 4:32, to name but one) refer to the “ends of the heavens”. Likewise, well over a dozen references to the Earth having solid foundations can easily be found in just a few books of the Old Testament, as will be seen shortly.

What else is present, then, in the diagram?

We see the foundations of the heavens (2 Samuel 22:8,16) and the foundations of the Earth (Job 38:4, Psalm 18:15, Psalm 82:5, Psalm 102:25, Psalm 104:5, Proverbs 8:29, Isaiah 24:18, Isaiah 40:21, Isaiah 48:13, Isaiah 51:13,16, Jeremiah 31:37, Micah 6:2, Sirach 10:16, Sirach 16:19). The sea is also present, as is the land of the world (Genesis 1:9-10). Hades, the underworld, is also depicted (Tobit 13:2, Wisdom 1:14, Wisdom 2:1, Wisdom 16:13, Wisdom 17:14, Matthew 11:23, Luke 10:15, Luke 16:23, Acts 2:27, Revelation 1:18). The “Heavens of the Heavens” — the Highest Heavens (Psalm 148:4) — are represented, as is the dwelling of the Lord in the Highest Heavens.

This, then, is the view of the Universe of the people of the Old Testament, and would have been shared by all the Hebrews. It is also the cosmological model that the writers of the Old and New Testaments would have used when speaking about the Universe in any capacity. And if, O Reader, you profess the belief that Genesis is meant to be taken as a completely literal historical account, then this must be the cosmological model you profess as well…or else, you’re not a complete literalist.

You can’t profess this view of the solar system:

You can’t profess this view of the galaxy:

You can’t profess this view of the Universe:

If, O Reader, you are a Young Earth Creationist who insists on treating Genesis as a literal account of history, you must profess the belief that the Universe is structured as depicted in the first image in this posting, the image I drew. And, if you profess the doctrine of sola scriptura, you are especially obligated to reject the cosmological model presented in the latter three pictures, which is (more or less) the cosmological model presented to us by modern astronomy.

Reciprocally, if you argue that the cosmological model presented by modern astronomy is correct, you are not in adherence to the doctrine of sola scriptura, nor are you interpreting Scripture 100% literally. You are, in fact, augmenting your understanding of Scripture with scientific evidence, and shifting your interpretation of Scripture to match the empirical evidence that scientific inquiry into the structure of the Universe has discovered.

Either way, something must here be acknowledged: there exists a discrepancy between the description of the Universe, as presented in Scripture, and the shape of the Universe as has been observed by mankind.

Implications of this Discrepancy

The difference between the cosmological model presented in the Bible and the observed shape of the Universe is profound. They are not, in any significant way, similar.

On the face of it, at least, Scripture is simply incorrect about the shape of the Universe. That’s the main implication of this massive discrepancy: that Scripture is not inerrant and infallible.

So how, as Christians, do we address this problem, if in fact we believe that Scripture is inerrant and infallible? Well, if we believe that the Book of Genesis contains a literal account of creation, and that it is intended to be read as a historically/scientifically accurate work, we can’t address this problem. And in fact, this problem is one of many that utterly defeat our viewpoint. Faced with the overwhelming evidence that the shape of the cosmos is vastly different than is described in Scripture, there are only two options left open to a literalist:

1. Admit that Scripture is in error, OR
2. Denounce science, research, and empirical study as demonic

It should be obvious to the Reader, I hope, that the second option — though often indulged in by Christians — is fundamentally irrational, and also out of alignment with Scripture. The Bible tells us, quite plainly, that the natural world reveals the glory of God (c.f. Psalm 19, Job 12), and so shall be for humanity a source of truth and revelation. God Himself is not revealed in the study of the world and of the heavens, because God is not empirically observable. But the heavens and the Earth tell His glory and are a testament to His might and his ordinance of creation. So we cannot dismiss the study of the world and the heavens — science, essentially — as demonic, for God Himself, through the Spirit which inspired the authors of Scripture, assures us that this is not the case.

The strict literalist, then, is left with no choice but to admit that Scripture is in error.

Moving Past Literalism

To this point, we’ve only looked at the interpretation of Scripture from a strictly literal perspective, which Young Earth Creationists claim to do. Of course, in making such a claim, Young Earthers commit a hypocrisy of sorts, since it is clear that most Young Earthers accept a non-Biblical cosmological model to be valid. Were they really literalists, 100% of the time, their cosmological model would be the same as was used by the ancient Hebrews, which was also reflected in other cultures of the ancient world.

Let’s be realistic: ancient cultures did not have the sophisticated tools and rigorous methods that modern researchers employ. They did not have the means to analyze the world and the Universe in as much detail as we do in this modern era. Indeed, they had only their eyes, and what could be observed with them.

We see this reflected in Scripture. Every aspect of the ancient cosmological model presented at the beginning of this writing is explicable when one considers the ancient context of its promulgation. It made sense for ancient scholars to assume that the position of the Earth was fixed, and that the world was set upon firm foundations; can any of us feel the Earth orbiting around the Sun, and can any of us topple the Earth from its position in the heavens? Of course not.

Likewise, it made sense to assume that the sky was a fixed dome, in which the Sun, Moon, and all the stars were fixed — or, at least, it was a reasonable conjecture that this was the case. Likewise, it made sense to assume that a great sea was held back by the great dome of the sky, for how else might it come to pass that water should precipitate down from on high? And why else would the sky have such a sea-like blue hue?

This was the ancient understanding; the early Hebrews knew nothing of the vast distances that separate the stars, or of the nuclear fusion that drove the Sun, or of the fact that it was the rotation of the Earth — and not the movement of the Sun — which caused the cycle of days and nights. And the authors of Scripture — especially Genesis — would have understood the world and Universe through the cosmological model of their day. Their scientific understanding of things, if it can be called that, was an ancient one.

Is it possible, then, that we are meant to interpret Scripture in a less-than-completely literal way? Is it possible, then, that when we interpret Scripture, we must do so in the understanding that the science contained therein is the science “of the day,” and that it may not have been intended, by the Spirit, to be understood as a literal explanation of the ordering of the world and Universe? Is it not also possible, then, that we are not meant to interpret as literal what appears, at first glance, to be a historical account in Genesis?

As to a Child

When we explain complicated things to small children, we often have to use simpler examples drawn from the realm of the child’s understanding in order to illustrate our lesson to them. And additionally, we have to obfuscate. Think for a minute of, say, a song that is sometimes taught to children:

…the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone.
The knee bone’s connected to the shin bone.
The shin bone’s connected to the ankle bone…

It’s not a bad learning tool, and a decent introduction to basic skeletal biology. And yet: which thigh bone? Which ankle bone? In both cases, there is more than one bone present in the actual human skeleton. But how do you explain that to a small child? The ankle more or less looks like it’s made of one bone, and feels as though it is — how do you explain to a small child, in a way that the child will understand, that there are actually many bones in the ankle?

And also: is it even important, for the purposes of the basic lesson you are attempting to impart to the child, to do so?

Accommodation

When we speak to children, we accommodate to their level of knowledge. We don’t bombard them with facts (or, at least, we shouldn’t) and precise details. We teach by using simpler examples, and by simplifying the concept being taught…for the moment. As children get older, we can teach them the finer details and more complex aspects of the lesson.

Is it possible, then, that God took this approach with humanity, his children? When the Spirit sought to inspire the ancient authors of Scripture to communicate a message of faith — that God is creator of all things — is it possible that instead of bombarding the authors with exhaustive explanations of atoms, amoebas, and astronomy, that the Spirit instead opted to accommodate to the ancient understanding of the author, and use the extant cosmological model of the day as a metaphorical vehicle for a theological teaching?

Could God not have opted to keep the Bible simple for us, that we might come to discover the more complicated aspects of the world and of creation when we were ready to do so…when we were older?

I don’t just think this is possible; I think it’s likely.

Humanity, at the time that many of the books of the Old Testament were written, was as a child in its understanding of the world and Universe. Humanity “thought like a child…reasoned like a child.” And even into the time of the New Testament, that understanding of the natural world had not advanced very much; still, we only understood as a child does.

Now, though, we have become something else. Humanity has grown; is it possible that we should begin to “put away childish things,” including the ancient understandings of the world and its origins?

The purpose of the Bible is not to tell us about the structure of the heavens, but to tell us about Heaven itself, about God, about humanity’s need for God, and about the glorious plan of salvation that God has effected and made manifest in Christ Jesus. The Bible, as Galileo so ably put it, tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.

Perhaps it is time that we respected the Bible enough to admit this.

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Within several Christian denominations, but especially Catholicism, the Blessed Virgin Mary is known by several different titles, one of which is “the New Ark”. In fact, within Catholic theology, Mary’s revelation as the New Ark of the Covenant forms an integral piece of the justification for the Catholic belief in her perpetual virginity, as well as for her unique place and role within Christ’s plan of salvation for all people.

That’s not just some whimsical Catholic invention, mind you; it is right there in the Bible. Looking back at what we covered regarding hermeneutics, and reading the New Testament in light of the Old Testament, we can see that Scripture itself justifies the belief that Mary is indeed the New Ark: the language used to describe Mary during her pregnancy with the Lord very neatly parallels the language used to describe the Ark of the Covenant.

Brant Pitre notes that “a case can be made that the Ark is in fact an Old Covenant type that points forward to a new Ark, and that this new Ark of the Covenant is the Virgin Mary. Although we don’t have the space to go into detail here, suffice it to say that numerous Catholic commentators have noted that Luke’s account of the Annunciation bears striking parallels with the Old Testament accounts of the consecration of the Ark (Exodus 40) and the bringing of the Ark by David into Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6; 1 Chronicles 15). Compare the following:

1. The Descent of the Glory Cloud
The glory of the Lord and the cloud cover the Tabernacle (containing the Ark) and “overshadow” (episkiazen) them (Exod 40:34-35, cf. v. 3).

The Holy Spirit comes upon Mary and the power of the Most High “overshadows” (episkiasei) her (Luke 1:35).

2. The Ark Goes into the Hill Country
David “arose and went” to the hill country of Judah to bring up “the ark of God” (2 Samuel 6:2).

Mary “arose and went” into the hill country of Judah to visit Elizabeth (Luke 1:39).

3. How Can the Ark Come to Me?
David admits his unworthiness to receive the Ark by exclaiming: “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” (2 Samuel 6:9)

Elizabeth admits her unworthiness to receive Mary by exclaiming: “And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:43)

4. Leaping and Shouting Before the Ark
David “leaped” before the Ark as it was brought in “with shouting” (2 Samuel 6:15-16)

John “leapt” in Elizabeth’s womb at the sound of Mary’s voice and Elizabeth cried “with a loud shout”: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed in the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:41-42)

5. The Ark Stays for 3 Months
The Ark remained in the hill country, in the house of Obed-Edom, for “three months” (2 Samuel 6:11)

Mary remained in the hill country, in Elizabeth’s house, “three months” (Luke 1:56)

In light of these startling parallels, it is reasonable to conclude that Luke is highlighting the parallels between Mary and the old Ark of the Covenant to suggest that she is New Ark. Just as glory cloud had overshadowed the Tabernacle in the Old Testament, so that God might dwell among men, so now the Holy Spirit overshadows Mary, so that the Word becomes flesh and “tabernacles” among us (John 1:14). The New Ark is Mary’s body. Just as the old Ark housed the 10 Commandments, the Manna, and the Priestly Rod of Aaron, so too the New Ark houses the Word of God, the Bread of Life, the True Priest.

Now, should there be any doubt that these parallels between the Old and New Testaments in the Gospel of Luke are drawing a connection between Mary and the Ark of the Covenant, it should be recalled that these are not the only texts in the New Testament that connect the Ark and Mary. In another famous text, the revelation of the location of the Ark — in heaven — is juxtaposed with a vision of the Mother of the Messiah — also in heaven:

Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, loud noises, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars… (Revelation 11:19-12:2)

Clearly, there appears to be some connection between these two figures: both the Ark and the Woman appear in God’s Temple “in heaven.” Moreover, a strong case can be made that the woman — who is an individual, just like the “child” (Jesus) and the “dragon” (Satan) mentioned in the same passage are (Rev 12:3-4)—is indeed Mary, the Mother of the Messiah.

In light of passages such as these, Mary was revered in the ancient Church — and continues to be revered today in the Catholic Church — as the new “Ark” of the Covenant.”

It would take a very deliberately blinded person to deny that the woman, clothed in the Sun and giving birth to the child within the apocalyptic vision that is the Book of Revelation, is in fact Mary, the Theotokos, the mother of Christ who is God enfleshed.

Now, as I noted, the belief that Mary is in fact the Ark of the New Covenant, the New Ark, is an integral piece of the Catholic belief that Mary remained perpetually virginal unto the day of her Assumption into Heaven. The significance is that Joseph, being a faithful Jew, would certainly have understood the significance of Mary’s pregnancy, for he was specifically told by the angel that the child within her womb was holy, and from the Holy Spirit (c.f Matthew 1:20). Out of his earnest Jewish faith, it is likely that Joseph would have immediately grasped to deeper significance of what he was being told, and would have understood that the womb of his wife was a dwelling place of the Lord — the holiest of holies, akin to the innermost area of the Temple.

Now, let’s think about where we’ve gone before, up to this point. We noted that in the Book of Leviticus, even a sexual act between husband and wife would result in ritual defilement until the next evening, provided that there was a discharge of semen that resulted from it. We also know, from numerous descriptions and passages within the Bible, that Jews held the Ark of the Covenant not only in high regard, but in fearful esteem; the power of the Ark was well-attested, and in the common practice of the Jewish Religion only the high priest could enter into its holy presence. It was death to the enemies of the Hebrew people, and full of the power of God.

In short, the Ark ought to have inspired reverence, and yet a most dreadful fear, in the hearts of all who knew its purpose and power. And for the average Jew, it did just that.

We know from Scripture that Joseph was a faithful, righteous Jew who followed the law of Moses. For Joseph, the Ark would indeed have been the holiest of holies, something which he would be (rightly!) fearful to approach, if he beheld it. Of course, at the time that Joseph learned that Mary, his bride-to-be, was with child, the Ark had long been absent from the Temple. But the tabernacle was still present, and every Jew understood its meaning. Joseph certainly would have understood it.

And it is Joseph who provides us with our first hint, in the New Testament that Mary was indeed a virgin for all her days after the birth of Christ. Joseph feared to take Mary as a wife, and had to be reassured by the angel that it was the Lord’s will that he do so (c.f. Matthew 1:20). Why would Joseph feel fear? Granted, the passage appears in the context of Joseph suspecting Mary of adultery, and in our modern, sex-saturated culture it would be only too easy to eisegetically assume that this was the source of his fear; the law of Moses imposed a harsh penalty on any man who consorted with an adulteress.

But that isn’t really what the angel is saying, is it? The angel tells Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife — that is, Joseph is not to be afraid of Mary herself. And while it seems strange to our sex-saturated culture to think so, the view of Christians throughout history has been that what Joseph actually feared was Mary’s sanctity. The angel assured Joseph that the child within her womb was conceived of the Holy Spirit, and it is reasonable to expect that Mary, once Joseph learned of her pregnancy, had shared with him the angel’s own words to her (c.f. Luke 1:35). Taken together, these facts would have surely given Joseph pause, and would certainly have made him piously fearful of the body of his wife-to-be, as surely as any faithful Jew would be afraid of the power and sanctity of the Ark.

Thus, I ask you: approximately how anxious do you, O Reader, suppose that Joseph would be to defile, even if only until the evening, the woman standing before him with a holy child from the Lord within her womb? How anxious do you suppose Joseph would be to defile that which was as holy as the very Ark itself, knowing (as he would certainly have known) that for him to engage in even normal marital sexual relations with Mary would have brought about a customary, temporary ritual defilement upon both her and him?

Now, up to this point, O Reader, we haven’t directly examined the issue of Mary’s perpetual virginity as can be justified directly from Scripture. That is coming up next, and will take us first into the Gospel of Luke. With a little luck, I’ll even get it written today…if not, rest assured that it will be the first thing I work on come tomorrow.

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