(March 4, 2013 at 11:51 pm)FallentoReason Wrote: I find that the only logical thing a Christian could do is believe the Bible word for word. I understand why some of my friends are compelled to do this, because if we diminish everything by saying the OT is metaphorical, supernatural events don't happen, evolution is true & not all disbelievers will go to hell, then what do you have left? Why even bother with the Bible if you're stripping it from all the essential things that make it the Bible?
I eventually deconverted because as I rationalized different parts of Christianity in a way that would align with what I knew about reality, but wouldn't take away from the core of Christianity. I eventually accepted that God doesn't speak to you, that miracles don't happen today, that morality isn't necessarily derived from the Bible etc and then I woke up one day and realised it was all lies.
You might want to be careful with how liberal you go, unless your aim is to unshackle yourself from your culture's default religious belief.
I do not consider myself theologically liberal. It is one thing to intentionally reinterpret a teaching that has been given by the Holy Spirit. It is another thing to question whether the Holy Spirit ever actually inspired the teaching.
Here is a point by point view of that:
1. Word for Word - The fact is that we do not have the original words of scripture. There is a diversity of scriptures and a diversity of interpretations. Answers to many questions may very well lie in the various textual and interpretative issues as well as translation issues and exegetical and hermenutical issues. God did not give people a bound Bible, God gave people a series of letters.
2. supernatural events don't happen - They absolutely do. I have seen miracles, they are real, the miracles in the Bible are real. The mainline protestant churches scare me with their rejection of the supernatural, this is clearly against what Christianity teaches.
3. evolution is true - I am not really sure that that Genesis intends to teach that evolution did not happen. There are two creation stories, that seem to subtly conflict with each other. Adam's name in the Hebrew means "man". Augustine interpreted Genesis in a non-literal way before the advent of modern science. Many theologians today doubt the exact reading that is required from Genesis.
4. Not all disbelievers go to hell - If you believe in Biblical innerancy, you should believe this, because the Bible clearly teaches that many, many Old Testament saints such as Job, Melchizdeck, the Ninevites, etc, are included in the plan of salvation, though they do not hear of the Gospel.
5 stripping it of the essential things that make it the Bible - I do not think that this strips it from the things that make it the Bible. The essential core teachings of sin, judgement and redemption through Jesus Christ are intact. The Bible is fundamentally a book about morality, it is not really a book about science. There is a whole range of views about the historicity of the Old Testament, obviously this is an important issue. But there is also a great deal of archeological evidence for a lot of the events in the Old Testament such as the rule of David in 1000BC. I do not know if Genesis is intended to be taken literally or if the genealogies are intended to be stitched together to bring all of human history together under one Father, Adam, man, and one Father who created him, YHWH. I do not believe that the genealogies of scripture can be literal and there is very strong evidence against this, but I don't see it as compromising the integrity of scripture.
If you were trying to create one book which captured everything people need to know, it would be impossible to have the detail of a scientific journal and the accessibility and portability of a small book in the same book. So I think that allegorical approaches to scripture or less literalistic as in Old Earth Creationism make sense, maybe with gaps in the genealogies. There are a whole range of possibilities, I really could not say exactly what happened.
There are many Christians who have studied Genesis and are serious professional scientists who have considered these issues and have come to different positions. The true answer, like the origin of life or the correct way to unify quantum and cosmological physics, is really just unknown to people. That doesn't mean that there could not be any answer, there are many possible answers which do not undermine the Christian faith.
