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A $25 million creation museum is under construction in rural Kentucky, with the intention of challenging the scientific consensus view of origins. MSNBC tells us about it in a story titled High-tech museum brings creationism to life. They quote Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis saying, If the Bible is the word [...] There’s a moment in sermons that makes me cringe and my wife grin. She kind of enjoys seeing me squirm. What is this important moment? It’s when a pastor says, “What the Greek really says is . . .” Sometimes it’s worded a bit differently, but I believe that when you hear or read that phrase or something similar, the vast majority of the time you’re about to get misinformed. This week our pastor used the phrase “knowingly and with full intent” just to get the laugh out of us, which is all in good fun. There are several reasons for this. First, most pastors are not well enough trained in Greek or Hebrew to make such a statement with confidence. Unfortunately, this is often also true about writers who are not specialists in the language. I have found significant errors–not differences of opinion, but demonstrable errors–in books written by famous writers and published by well-known publishing houses. In one book I found a case where a Hebrew word was cited, and not only was the definition or the suggested glosses (English words suggested to translate it) questionable, but the word itself was simply not in the verse in question. Newsweek currently has an interview with Tim LaHaye in which he discusses current events in the middle east and their relationship to the end times. I find myself in pretty nearly complete disagreement with LaHaye on his interpretation of Revelation, but that should be no surprise to anyone. But he emphasizes one point in his interview that I think needs to be examined, and that’s the attempt to interpret things literally whenever possible. When the interviewer asks him about Biblical scholars who might disagree with his viewpoint, he says:
When asked whether Revelation should be interpreted as a polemic against Rome, he says:
Asked about support for Israel amongst Christians, he says:
It is clear that he regards the issue of whether one interprets the Bible literally as of central importance. I agree with him. But literal vs. non-literal is only one way of dividing Biblical interpreters, and he is not correct in suggesting that it is mostly liberals who would disagree with his position. There are, in fact, numerous interpretations of Revelation that are supported by people who take a very conservative view of the inspiration of the Bible, and many of these are directly contradictory to LaHaye’s interpretation. Suzanne McCarthy has been blogging on complementarianism over on the Better Bibles Blog. I have been following her posts with interest, and I would like to commend them to my readers. The entries to date are: Modes of Communication I, Modes of Communication II, Modes of Communication III. Suzanne obviously doesn’t subscribe to [...] With a hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars, I’d like to call attention to the text of a speech given by Howard J. Van Till (The Fourth Day) to the Freethought Association of West Michigan. Van Till’s work on evolution in general and intelligent design in particular is amongst my favorite [...] In 2002 Florida voters approved an amendment ordering the state to reduce class size. As with so many such amendments, the state was left to look for a way to provide the teachers and pay them. The story in my home county, Escambia, and in neighboring Santa Rosa county is in today’s Pensacola [...] For years, ever since I first heard of nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, I have thought that our health care profession could be improved by using less expensive–but not necessarily less effective–professionals to provide primary care. Now, in an article Want Treatment With Those Pills?, Newsweek is describing just such a revolution in [...] In an article titled Raising Beast People, subtitled “Science is blurring the line between humans and animals, Lee Silver has pointed to some of the aspects of science that raise our greatest fears. All of the science fiction stories of humans turning into monsters, all the stories of alien interventions, and all of [...] Peter Kirk has writtten that he finds a complementarian bias in the TNIV. He says: A major aim of the changes made in Today’s New International Version (TNIV) was to avoid the danger of such misunderstandings. I don’t think anyone can complain about TNIV’s rendering of 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “Anyone who is [...] A friend recently e-mailed with the following request: Tell me why you like the REB. First let me qualify what I mean by liking a translation. There are many factors that go into making a translation suitable for a particular purpose or person. Without knowing that context, it’s impossible to give a meaningful [...] |
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