Search results

Not quite an apologist, but I enjoy John Polkinghorne for the quantum physics angle. David Bentley Hart is another personal favorite, though I wish he were a bit more gracious. Also increasingly intrigued by Alvin Plantinga, and planning on taking a look at Edward Feser's defense of Aquinas.

Edited You see nothing in Genesis 1 that would lead one to think that salvation is a matter of restoring the image of God in mankind? I was referring to Genesis 1:27, and I'm actually not aware of any branch within Christianity that doesn't view salvation in such a light, so I'm not really...

He's one of my favorites! Though I'm currently trying to finish up that Chesterton book you've got quoted there in your signature--I started it about half a year ago but kept on getting distracted! I would think it clear enough that I was referring to Genesis 1 that I needn't explicitly say...

Eh, I really think that when "Sheol" got translated as "Hades," Greek mythology creeped in, and then Dante enshrined it forever in the Christian consciousness. I'd say that it's very difficult to draw a description from the Bible itself, since much of what is there shows up in the context of...

It seems to me that you believe that the flood story in the Bible is a fully accurate account of what happened, whereas Jim believes that the flood occurred and that the biblical account is an accurate theological explanation, presumably projected retroactively by people who weren't in a...

Mental illness runs in my family, so I would say that it's definitely more than just the result of life experiences. I don't have any of the serious conditions, but I do have a whole menagerie of anxiety disorders, which is plenty of fun in its own right. The root cause of my problems is almost...

Quite the opposite, really. Too much of a literal reading of the OT and you end up with a bit of an amplified Zeus character. (Which doesn't mean it always happens, but there is that danger.) I'm not sure how it's possible to view the OT as a sort of concealed revelation of God and the NT as the...

This all still begs the question of how does one rely on Scripture. Both passages really just seem to be pointing to the authority of Scripture, not to its historicity or the insistence upon a literal reading. If someone goes fullblown Pelagian, there's probably a problem with their...

Considering where we left things off in the other thread, I think it's worth pointing out that there are any number of different approaches to reading Scripture. We've got various theories of inspiration, different levels of hostility or acceptance of higher criticism, and so forth and so on...

I'm not sure if we're defining "metaphor" in the same way. Because using the word "bread" while not talking about a baked lump of flour and water is specifically what makes that line metaphorical. (Well, technically I would consider it mystical language rather than metaphorical, but I don't...

I can give you an explanation, but the problem with demanding biblical footing is that the Bible doesn't specifically address how it's to be interpreted. It claims divine inspiration but doesn't explain how exactly that works, and different traditions interpret that in a variety of manners. The...

I think that many people who are going to view Genesis 2 as allegorical are inclined to view everything through Noah's Ark and perhaps beyond in the same light, so it's entirely consistent to accept or reject the whole thing as historical. I imagine it would also be possible to think that Adam...

No problem. :) The argument is whether or not it's appropriate to read Genesis allegorically instead of literally. One argument is that because Paul discusses Adam and Eve, he must have understood them as historical figures and therefore anyone who reads the Garden of Eden differently must be...

Agreed! Of course, the obsession that something be historical fact to be authoritative is super modern. There was a huge shift in mindset during the Enlightenment, so projecting backwards to appeal to Paul on an issue doesn't work when Paul would have likely thought that both sides were insane.

It could very well be literal and historical, but Paul doesn't actually state anywhere that it is. "For it is written" certainly doesn't mean "For it is historical fact." The fact that it could be literal does not change the reality that Paul based a teaching on a figurative interpretation of...

We're going around in circles, because I have and will continue to maintain that Paul absolutely would base a rule on an allegorical story, and in fact did so in Galatians 4:24. Very well. If your problem isn't reading comprehension, it's deliberate malice, as I've now told you twice that I'm...

I haven't yet seen a reasonable argument from Scripture that Genesis cannot be read allegorically, so all we're dealing with is opinions. This is ridiculous. Paul was quite explicitly talking about people who look at Scripture, decide it's nonsense, and then discard it as such. You'll see...

I could just as easily say that you guys are spiritually blind for not reading Genesis the way I think it should be read. It's not necessarily a logical fallacy to say that people are susceptible to spiritual blindness, but it is very much an ad hominem attack to use that particular passage to...

You're the one who threw in the argument about the doors, not me. I'm just trying to make it applicable. And I'm not remotely an atheist. Well, same argument. That from our perspective, good would have been meaningless in a universe where it was the only possibility. There'd have been nothing...

Ooh, ad hominem. My favorite logical fallacy. Pretty ironic use of it, though, all things considered. The way science is approached has an atheistic bias, I meant. People assume naturalism and then write off any other worldview as unscientific. You can assert evolution and then not make...