Quote:
Originally Posted by Nuclear
Science has throughout my childhood been something I was fascinated with, I ate it up as a middle/high schooler. Even now despite being an engineering student I enjoy learner more about the natural world. As I’m sure some of you can relate, this often conflicted with a literal interpretation of the Bible, especially creation. I managed to postpone what would eventually happen with stopgaps like the “gap theory” with regards to the age of the Earth, among other things. The doubts I had still remained relatively weak, but the cracks were there.
I still remember that night vividly. I was browsing the internet and fell down an internet rabbit-hole on the validity of the Bible scientifically and based off of historical record. The openness that the subject matter was discussed with was something I had never encountered before, but I couldn’t stop reading. It sort of shocked the sort of jaded way that I had always looked at the bible away. The whole book, creation, Noah’s flood, Moses, treatment of women, of other cultures, it all looked so different. Really looking at it and seeing how it fit into our modern understanding of how the universe and life began, stuff that I was aware of but would always mentally try to blend in with the Biblical account, it just made so much more sense standalone.
I don’t know if any of you have had that experience, but the dam really broke that fast. I went in with few but nagging doubts and near absolute faith in the LC and then later going to bed with my entire worldview broken and shattered into a million pieces. I was physically sick for several days after, but after I felt so liberated. No anxiety over whether I was living the “Spirit” all the time. No more concern over some of my high school friends spending eternity in hellfire. I don’t really know how to say it but the world just felt so fresh and vibrant without being pigeonholed into a Biblical worldview.
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Here's the problem with the phrase "a Biblical worldview" as I see it. Some of the Bible is missing, and some of it's wrong, and some is corrupted. So what view should one take from the Bible?
Missing: When they found the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947, there was a verse in Psalm 145 that had long been missing that was found, and re-inserted in the "modern text", including, ahem, the
RecV. The reason they knew it was missing was that the Psalm was an 'acrostic' with each verse starting with a new letter in sequence. But there it was in the DSS. This shows that the text has been remarkably well-curated if the 2,000 year-old DSS and the medieval copies agree so well, but one can't be too sure that some other bits aren't missing. We just don't know. So a bit of circumspection might be in order, in formulating and holding one's views.
Wrong: I already covered the fate of Judas in another post. He's listed as dying in two different ways, which doesn't seem possible.
Corrupted: I toted around the KJV for years as proof of my "orthodoxy". One day I read the verses from 1 John 5 aloud in my study group, and everyone looked at me blankly. Evidently this section was called the "Johannine comma" and most modern versions don't have it. Someone in the Middle ages tried to "prove" the trinity concept biblically and inserted it into the manuscript. Again, this is the exception not the rule. But corruption exists. Older texts have remarkable agreement. But there's evidence of deliberate corruption in at least some variants (e.g., KJV).
Another case is with Jewish historian Josephus. His text mentions that Jesus was the Christ and was seen on the third day, risen from the dead. "Most scholars currently incline to see the passage as basically authentic, with a few later insertions by Christian scribes."
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, page 249. Paula Fredricksen.
http://www.bede.org.uk/Josephus.htm
The text was probably corrupted by later Christians who wanted independent textual witness that Jesus was Christ and resurrected on the 3rd day. Of course any textual narrative, when copied by hand over centuries, will endure some unintentional corruption. But the question is, how much deliberate corruption was done at the hands of Christian apologists? I see two cases, outlined above. There may be more, some even egregious. So circumspection is in order.
That's all I'm trying to say here. A "Biblical worldview" doesn't mean that you have to believe that every single word is literally true. Some fundamentalists work that way, and I feel bad for their children who must put up with such nonsense to survive. Just to cite one case, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has produced a sea-change in Biblical studies, but other than supplying one verse to the
RecV, it's had no discernible impact in the LC. If that's what's meant by the phrase above I agree. But there are Biblical worldviews that differ greatly from the LC variant. Some are quite obliging to scientific methods.
I remember serving in a children's meeting, and the elder's wife scoffed, "Everybody knows dinosaurs didn't exist" and I was like, "Huh!?" But of course I didn't say anything because in the LC one didn't profitably argue with the elder's wife.