Can We Trust the Bible in a Scientific Age?

Can we still believe the Bible in a scientific age? C. John Collins Covenant Theological Seminary

Christians and Jews have traditionally believed that Genesis 1–11 give the true universal story

What challenges might make us think otherwise?

The problem of history: How can something someone did so long ago have any effect on me?

The Bible is an ancient book What about other ancient stories?

Modern sciences Age of the universe

Evolutionary biology

DNA

Genetic diversity?

1. What does the Bible say? 2. Is it credible? 3. Guidelines: A place to stand with room to maneuver

1. What does the Bible say? • The Bible’s main purpose • What do we have in Genesis? • Genesis and the age of the world • Adam and Eve

Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 4:What do the Scriptures principally teach? The Scriptures principally teach, what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.

Your worldview describes the way you lean into life, how you relate — — to God, — to others, and — to the world around you.

A community instills its worldview by means of its Big Story: • where we came from • what went wrong • what has been done about it • where we now are in the whole process • where the whole world is headed

Moses arranged his details in such a way as to give the people a clearer notion, and he does this after the manner of a popular poet, in order that he may the more adapt himself to the spirit of simple rusticity. John Colet (1467–1519)

J.I. Packer on the literary style of Genesis 1–11 — • “the poetic-prose mode of narration in Genesis 1–11, with its pictorial, imaginative, quasi-liturgical phraseology, its paucity of mere information and its drumbeat formulae,” in comparison “to the ordinary narrative-prose mode of the rest of” Genesis. • Moses means “those narratives to be understood as space-time history, although told in his chosen incantatory-poetic way.” —

The shape of the Big Story — • a good creation, • marred by human fall into rebellion, • where God is active to redeem humankind and all they affect, • which God will bring into final judgment and complete fruition.

Refrain And there was evening and there was morning, The 1st / 2nd / 3rd /4th/5th/ 6th (none on day 7!)

“The creation days are the workdays of God.” –Herman Bavinck “Go ahead, disagree with me. I dare you.” —H. Bavinck

If these are God’s workdays, analogous to human workdays, Then — • exactly how long they were, or • exactly how their activities might match what we find in the fossils, simply do not matter.

Romans 5:12–21 The argument depends on a narrative — Someone did something (trespass), then Something happened (sin, death, condemnation), then Jesus came to deal with the consequences That is, the sequence matters; it is far more than simply an “example” or “comparison”

Romans and Genesis 2–3 “in Adam” 1 Corinthians 15,22

Romans and Genesis 2–3 Other passages: New Testament — Matthew 19,3–9 Second Temple Judaism — Wisdom 2,23–24; 10,1 Sirach 33,10; 40,1

The story has these three basic elements — 1. Unified human family 2. “Special” creation of humankind 3. Historical fall — sin is an intruder, not our created condition; it disrupts and defiles

1. What does the Bible say? 2. Is it credible? 3. Guidelines: A place to stand with room to maneuver

2. Is it credible? • A purposeful universe • What sets humans apart • What all humans share in common • What story explains it all?

Cosmic Fine Tuning You were meant to be right here, right now

2. Is it credible? • A purposeful universe • What sets humans apart • What all humans share in common • What story explains it all?

Aristotle (Ἀριστοτέλης) bce 384–322

The human being is by nature a political animal. …

Our communities go beyond what we find in the beehive or in the buffalo herd: we not only make noise, but “humankind alone of the animals possesses speech,” and we use language to talk about what is right and wrong, and about what is advantageous or disadvantageous.

Can We Trust the Bible in a Scientific Age?