THE ELECTRONIC WORD

More and more electronic devices keep appearing in my adult Sunday Bible studies.  At first it was one or two of those little electronic Bibles that looked like cell phones, then along came smart phones, tablets and other devices.  Still, a greater percentage of students carry bound paper Bibles, but these folks are older and their number is decreasing.  I can't help but wonder if and when the time will come when I'll be the only dinosaur.  (Your wife will be too. - Uni)

I love My Bible(s).  I don't own any electronic version nor do I even know how to find one on my computer.  What's more, I don't even own any of those electronic aids.  I have shelves of aids - books - taking up space in my study: dictionaries, concordances, lexicons, Greek and Hebrew grammars.  All of these could be thrown out and replaced by a few discs or online subscriptions.  I have many reasons (or excuses) for not doing so: I have a lot of money invested in these and can't afford to invest in any more; I started with these and know my way around in them; I need the exercise of pulling them off the shelves.  (Liddell and Scott's Lexicon of Ancient Greek weighs 8 pounds.)

Please don't misunderstand.  I'm no Luddite.  I don't object to technology as such.  I'm using it right now!  Christians, as people of the Word, have always been open to technological advancement, especially in the area of communication.  For instance, Christians were among the first to utilize the codex - the modern book form - as opposed to scrolls;  it made Scriptural preaching much simpler when one could locate a passage more easily.  The printing press was welcomed by the early Reformers and Bible translators as a way to get the Word into the hands of the common people - the plowboy and the milkmaid.

And so we welcome the new ways of accessing and studying the Word.  A recent article in CHRISTIANITY TODAY, "The Bible in the Original Geek" (March 2014) discusses the many ways new technology "will change the way you think about Scripture."  We are able to data mine the Word for all sorts of insights.  We can even build our own translations without the need for knowledge of the original languages, or for those who have such knowledge.

Hopefully this is getting more people into the Bible and helping people to understand and gain insight.  And those who want to go deeper - scholars, preachers and seminarians - can do so more quickly and with greater ease.

I feel like I'm John Henry racing the steam drill!  (If you don't know who he is, you can Google him.)

I feel, however, that my techie friends may be missing out on a few things.  One thing is familiarity, not only with the Bible, but with books in general.  When I read a book - any book - I get intimate with it; I feel it; I smell it; I break it in by cracking its back in multiple places; I mark its pages; I flip back and forth; I write my thoughts, questions and disagreements in the margins.  I suppose one can do some, maybe most of these things with a book on a Nook, a Kindle or an iPad - but it seems to me that that would be like making love to a robot.

My Bible is more than data to be mined.  It's an old friend.  It's a letter from my Lover.  It's a story I'm familiar with.  It's a reminder of my past and present spiritual walk.  It saddens me to think that the very technology that can help us gain greater knowledge is depended on by many to give them greater understanding and wisdom.  Perhaps it can.  But these only can come through familiarity.

So if I may sermonize:  Read your Bible; don't just mine it for information.  Get familiar with the Book and its authors - both the human and the Divine.  Let its "data" penetrate your thinking, whether this comes about through electronic media or through paper and ink.  And let it penetrate your life and actions.

DRINKIN' FROM THE DIPPER

When I was a little boy my family's home was on a lot on a corner of my maternal grandparents' farm in Michigan.  Apparently Gramma and Grampa Lorenz had given a small lot to my family as well as to an aunt and uncle who lived next door.  So while technically I did not grow up on a farm, it was only 100 or so feet behind us and their farm house was not more than a half mile down the road.

But walking down that half mile was like stepping back in time.  My grandparents' house was old and not furnished with all the modern amenities that our house was.  They had no indoor plumbing and no running water.  Gramma did her cooking on a wood-burning stove.  Water was furnished from a well which was located just off the front porch and on top of which sat a wooden platform with a huge (to me) forest green cast iron pump.  Sometimes I would be assigned to fetch the water.  I would affix a porcelainized steel pail by its wire handle to the top of the spout projecting from the front of the pump and pump the handle up and down while a beautiful stream of clear cool water filled the pail.

Then with both hands I'd struggle to carry the pail in and place it on a shelf near the door.  On a smaller shelf just above the pail sat a porcelainized dipper.  Whenever anyone desired a drink, they'd dip the dipper in the water and place it to their lips.  When finished they'd shake it off and replace it on its shelf for the use of the next person.

We all drank out of the same dipper.

Later in life when I moved to Texas, I heard the expression, "He drinks from the dipper," used I suppose to describe a person who was just a regular guy, no better nor worse than the rest of us, one who did not feel he was above sharing in the normal matters of life with others.

Whenever I read the story of Jesus' meeting with the Samaritan woman at a well as John relates it in the 4th chapter of his gospel, my mind returns to the above thoughts.  A portion of the story is as follows:

"He had to pass through Samaria.  He comes then into a town of Samaria called Sychar ... There was in that place the well of Jacob.  Jesus, since He was worn out from the journey was sitting thus on the well.  It was about 6 in the evening.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus says to her, 'Give me a drink.'  (His disciples had gone into town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman says to Him, 'How do you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman for a drink?  Jews do not use things in common with Samaritans!'"  (John 4:4-9)

[NOTE:  I translated "the 6th hour" as 6 P.M.  John appears to use Roman time rather than Palestinian reckoning - see 19:14.  I also translated the Greek word sunchraomai as "use things in common" rather than the usual "have dealings with."  Obviously the disciples were "dealing with" the Samaritans to purchase food.]

The woman was astounded by Jesus' request for a number of reasons:

Jesus was a Jew - probably obvious to her by his tasseled garment - while she was a member of a group shunned by Jews for what was regarded by them as a corrupt religion and a corrupted mixed race.

Jesus was a man.  Jewish (and probably Samaritan) men did not speak to women 

publicly. This even was surprising to His disciples on their return later, as John says in verse 27:  "... they were amazed that He was talking with a woman."

She was also probably carrying some shame concerning her past and present marital/sexual activity.  Of course she didn't know till later in the conversation that Jesus knew all about her "checkered" past.  Verse 18:  "... you've had five husbands and the one whom you now have isn't your husband!"

She was apparently carrying a single water jug (verse 28). The only way for Him to get a drink from her would be to put her water jug to His lips.  He was asking to drink from her "dipper"!

While people of the first century were not germ-phobic as the people of our day are - they knew nothing about germs - the orthodox Jews were even more fearful of ritual defilement.  And this would have been that - big time.

There's much more to this story, but this simple request of Jesus is, I believe a metaphor for what He had done in His incarnation.  He, as preexistent God, took on Himself humanity.  He wasn't afraid of "contamination."  He became one of us.  He drank from the dipper!

So if Jesus could drink from the dipper, shouldn't we who claim to be His followers do the same?  Jesus broke down all sorts of barriers in this simple story:  racial barriers, religious barriers, gender barriers, barriers based on sexual behavior.

Do we?

WHAT IS TRUTH? - 3

(The following is my response to the previous post with John's permission.)

John:

I found your "3 important questions" quite significant though my answers disagree with yours.  I suppose we could write off most of our differences as merely semantic, but I think we both agree that definitions are important, as the first 2 questions indicate.  So I'll try and give my answers as well as my reasons for disagreement.

First, what is truth?  For some reason, though you asked this question first, you didn't answer it first.  Of course, you were responding to my post WHAT IS TRUTH?.  I still haven't changed my thinking on this, even though I posted this nearly 8 years ago.  Truth is simply that which is, those statements which correspond with reality.

It appears as if you, however, believe that there are two totally different kinds of truth, "physical truth" which, though it does exist, "cannot be known in a fixed and immutable way," and what I suppose you'd call "theological truth," that which "is exempt from challenge and improvement."

I disagree!  Though there may be many differing categories of truth statements, truth itself does not change its definition depending on its subject.

Though much of physical truth cannot be known with certainty as you state, there is quite a bit that can be known.  It is the truth for instance, that I got out of bed this morning; this is a known fact.  It is also a truth that the earth rotates around the sun and that if I jump off my roof I will fall in an earthward direction and so forth.

In the same manner, there are theological truths that can be known, that are "fixed and immutable."  But there are also many that, as in the realm of science, we cannot be certain of.  Centuries of theological debate certainly demonstrate that.

So then, there are truths in whatever category we may choose.  While some of these can be known with certainty, many cannot.  And all truth statements are open to challenge, though if they are truth they are not open to change.  Our faith or "belief" (or unbelief) in these statements in no way affects their truthfulness.

What is science?  You define it as "the construction and refinement of mathematical and conceptual models of observed physical phenomena; where the validity of a model is measured by how accurately the model predicts future events."  I wasn't sure exactly what this means.  I confess that I am not a scientist.  However, I am familiar with what is known as The Scientific Method, though as John C. Lennox states:  "Contrary to popular impression, there is no one agreed scientific method, though certain elements crop up regularly in attempts to describe what 'scientific' activity involves:  hypothesis, experiment, data, evidence, modified hypothesis, theory, prediction, explanation, and so on.  But precise definition is very elusive."  He quotes also the view that "science 'by definition deals only with the natural, the repeatable, that which is governed by law.'"  (God's Undertaker, page 32.)  Such definitions would rule out many fields such as cosmology as science, as he explains.  I would add that history and archaeology would also be ruled out.

Lennox gives "another way of looking at things" which he refers to as "the method of inference to the best explanation (or abduction ...").  He admits, however, that the previous method would "carry more authority."

Now to question 3:  "What point of view does the Bible come from in the field of science?"  Here it seems that while we both seem to end up in nearly the same place, we get there by different routes.

The Bible is not a scientific book; it is "pre-scientific."  The New Testament was completed 1,500 years before the birth of modern science; most of the Old Testament was completed even before the observations of the ancient Greeks; the Torah preceded them by 1,000 years.  So to speak of "early scientific models" is an anachronism, which

if Moses had used (to use your words), "he would have been ignored as a crazy person."

The biblical language, however, was not unscientific.  It simply referred to various phenomena as they were perceived.  Thus Moses would have perceived the sun as rising and setting (the same way we do).  The biblical writers also used figures of speech freely, such as metaphor and hyperbole.  I strongly suspect that the various creation accounts were just that.  (See my post:  SOME THOUGHTS ON CREATION.)

Of course, I'll also publish your response to my response.

(Now a few remarks as to some of CA's comments on your post.)

Yes, Galileo disagreed with the Church's teachings on cosmology.  But as I seem to recall, the problem was not that the Church had a biblically based view, but that the Church had adopted the "scientific" views of Aristotle, which had been around for two millennia.  Many -- both theologians and scientists -- of his day were opposed to him.  Scientists can be as conservative as theologians.  As you may know, the current "big bang" theory of the origins of the universe was opposed not only by 6-day creationists but also by scientists who held to a steady-state universe.

As I said above, faith doesn't determine truth; one's believe  in a truth claim does not make that claim true.  This goes for Atheists' beliefs as well as Christians' beliefs.  Atheists accept many unproven things by faith: how life emerged from non-life by natural selection; how mind evolved from non-mind.

Despite your claims to the contrary, there is evidence for the truths of Christianity, which if you really desired to, you could examine for yourself.

I would also recommend, John, that you do the same.

WHAT IS TRUTH? - 2
Guest post by my friend John Kulp

 

                                    

2/20/2014 

Hi Bill:

I started the below as a comment to your “truth” blog, but it got so long that I decided to send it as an email instead.  The first part you have heard from me before, but please bear through it again as context for my comments on scientific truth and the bible.  Your posts stretch my mind, I may be a heretic on this one, and I hope to hear your comments.

I will suggest that there are at least 3 important questions in correlating science, truth and the bible.  What is truth?  What is Science?  And what point of view does the Bible come from in the field of science?

Having held the title of senior scientist at one point in my career, and having known several University professors and PhD's in science who loved to discuss the philosophy of science, I will add my (their) answer to the second question.

Definition of Science:  Science is the construction and refinement of mathematical and conceptual models of observed physical phenomena; where the validity of a model is measured by how accurately the model predicts future events.

The repeatability of observation of physical phenomena gives me an intuitive sense that physical truth does exist, so I reject the postmodern view (that truth does not exist).  However, in science I am a philosophical anti-realist holding the view that physical truth (which does exist) cannot be known in a fixed and immutable way.  That kind of knowledge would, by definition, make a current descriptive model exempt from future challenge and improvement, and no scientific model is ever exempt from challenge and improvement.  Haldane said it well, that "the universe is not simply more complex than we understand, it is more complex than we can understand".   

In theology, conversely, I am a classical realist.  By faith I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God who came to earth to die on the cross to reconcile me to himself, opening the door for me to have a personal relationship with the creator of the universe.  I believe this to be truth, fixed and immutable.  This truth, for people of faith like me, is exempt from from challenge and improvement in a way that no law of science has ever been or ever will be.

These concepts are difficult and rarely understood but they are, in my opinion, the real conflict when people try to merge faith and science.  One is immutable and unchanging; the other is dynamic with improvement of every current scientific model being the explicit goal of the discipline of science.

Now on to question 3, what point of view does the bible come from in the field of science?  

I will suggest that the writers of the bible, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, did just what we do today, and just what writers have always done.  And that it was done for the same reason.

My pastor speaks about the “DNA of our church”.  That has clear meaning to each of us.  He is talking about who we are on the inside, our foundational building blocks, our blueprint for operation.  However, if a pastor in the early 1900’s had stood up and spoken about the DNA of the church, the audience would have been bewildered.  What is this guy talking about?  If he had given a late 20th century scientific explanation of DNA, they would have terminated him for being out of his mind.

Conversely, if we could look 100 years into the future we would certainly see a scientific concept of DNA that is very different than ours today.  The scientific models which describe DNA today will have been drastically modified.  If a minister in that world spoke about the DNA of his church, it would likely mean something completely different than it does here today.

So what is going on here?  Our pastor, and every other pastor, and virtually every writer outside of science fiction (including Bill Ball) uses language that is based on the current day scientific understanding of his or her readers.  Anything else would be at best meaningless and at worst confusing.  This is how man has written for the entire history of man; in the context of current science.  Anything else will not be understood by current readers.

And, since science is dynamic, the differences are related to time and not related to the concept of truth or falsehood.  The older writings simply use more rudimentary models of science and later writings simply use more advanced models of science.  People of the distant future will certainly continue this advance, looking back at today's writings on science as being “primitive” models. 

I will add here that there is a gigantic and very important difference between early scientific models and myth.  The sun and moon and stars moving through the sky was a legitimate scientific observation, and an earth centered universe was a reasonable early science model based on that observation.  Myths like the buddhist description of the earth being carried on two elephants causing earthquakes when they get out of step, are a very different thing.  They are silly by comparison.

So when John writes in Revelation about stars being small objects that can fall to the earth or into the seas of the earth we don’t have to twist like a pretzel to come up with some explanation to use in a futile attempt to go to war against science.  The explanation is simply that the current science when John wrote Revelation was that stars were small objects in the sky (a reasonable 1st century model based on 1st century observation capability).  If he had written that those tiny stars up there were really distant suns, many times larger than the earth people would have rejected the spiritual truths he wrote about because of his crazy theory about massive stars.

When Moses writes about the sun and moon and stars moving through the sky around the earth we don’t have to twist like a pretzel and come up with some stretched logic to align that view with Galileo’s model based on his observations of the moons of Jupiter.  The explanation is simply that the current science when Moses wrote Genesis was the model that those objects moved through the sky around the earth (it was a reasonable early scientific model based on valid observation).  If he had described it using Galileo’s or later more accurate models, he would have been ignored as a crazy person.

Virtually every writing in human history, other than myth, is written in the context of current scientific models at the time of writing.  Is it such a stretch to think that the writers of the bible did the same, simply because readers at the time of writing (and for hundreds of years beyond) would not have understood anything else?

John