What about them? Show me where they address President Harrison's question, "If I reject what Scripture teaches as history about creation, why should I not then reject everything else (including the resurrection itself) that appears contrary to reason?" Why? What's the principle they teach? That's what I've been seeking.
Why doesn't everyone who dismisses the account of creation or the flood or Jonah's time in the belly of the fish due to rational/scientific reasons also reject the incarnation and resurrection for those same reasons--do a full Bishop John Shelby Spong? My answer above isn't very different from the answer to the crux theologorum. It's a matter of God's mercy.
This doesn't deny that, "The truthfulness of the Gospel does not depend upon the inerrancy of the Scriptures." But the Scriptures do teach the Gospel. So why are the irrational and unscientific matters of incarnation and resurrection that are central to redemption retained even as other teachings of Scripture are dismissed on the basis of reason and science?
Everything we know about the scriptures, and sound hermeneutics, flows from Luke 24. Jesus very explicitly stated that the scriptures--all of them--are about him. We believe the scriptures because the resurrected Jesus said they are about him. Missouri Synod Lutherans acting like the church hadn't figured a out sound exegesis of creation/fall/redemption prior to the 1930s is very perplexing. The church fathers confessed the first article without much concern for the length of God's creative act. If they believed God created everything in 6 literal days, it wasn't central to their defense of creation/incarnation/resurrection. The Brief Statement rightly posits a teaching in the face of a world that had a very developed and specific alternative understanding of the universe's origins. But there is nothing new under the sun, ancient Christians went up against philosophies that denied God as Creator, that denied the incarnation, and that denied the reality of the resurrection. In fact, the resurrection and the incarnation have been beat up since the whole thing kicked into motion after Easter. And yet, remarkably, no defense of either has ever rested on the length of time it took God to actually create everything.
To claim that the resurrection--and therefore everything--depends on an understanding of creation taking place in 6 literal days is to remove yourself from catholicity. And that's a problem if you claim to be the Church of the Augsburg Confession.
M. Staneck
I agree with what you've said, but don't see it as addressing any issues I've raised. I certainly have never written that “the resurrection--and therefore everything--depends on an understanding of creation taking place in 6 literal days.”
My question has been concerning the doctrine of Scripture, what principle or rationale (some) people use to dismiss some Scripture passages on the basis of reason and science but not others.
President Harrison asked a question that is reasonable to ask. It addresses the way people think in our culture. We see it in the news every day. “You can't trust [pick your politician] because he/she lied.” And so everything a person ever says is questioned because of something they once said that was either a lie, (something they knew was untrue and spoke with the intention to mislead); untrue, (though they were not aware of that at the time(; or debatable, (unclear, equivocal, but subject to the worst construction for the benefit of one’s political interests). And though the standard is unfair, the mud sticks.
The new atheists are doing the same thing all the time with Scripture, taking textual variants--the presence or absence of a direct article or different form of a word in various manuscripts--and declaring Scripture is not trustworthy. So in our context it’s reasonable to ask, “If I reject what Scripture teaches as history about creation, why should I not then reject everything else (including the resurrection itself) that appears contrary to reason?” You identify this as fundamentalism. It sounds to me much like the reformer talking about “that whore reason.” If you’re giving reason/science magisterial power over Genesis 1 and 2, why not over Luke 2, John 20, or Romans 3? Why trust the Gospel at all. What could be more irrational than God loving a miserable sinner like you or me by sending his Son to die a vicarious death?
So then back up and help me understand what it is that determines which chapters and verses of Scripture are trustworthy and which aren’t and why. What’s the problem with saying the Gospel is true, and God’s word through which he’s delivered it is true as well, that “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind,” that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work,” that “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”? Those exclusive words, “no” and “all” tell me that God didn’t intend his word to be treated as a smorgasbord.
My guess is that you'd say there's no problem with saying what I’ve suggested except for the bogeyman of fundamentalism. But your fear of him on the right might help you understand why others fear the bogeyman of higher criticism on the left. (Bogeyman, here, intended to indicate not that there aren't real problems with fundamentalism and higher criticism, but that sometimes those threats aren’t really present in a given instance, we’re just imagining them.)
