Faith, Logic, and Myth April 20, 2009
Posted by Matt in Christian Beliefs.Tags: absolute truth, faith, logic, myth, narrative, reason, The Bible, The Flood
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Is there a line to be drawn between faith and logic?
Yesterday morning we were running very late for Sunday school, so I sat in the lobby for the final 10 minutes or so of class and listened to the session taking place in the auditorium (or “sanctuary” for the non-CoCers in the crowd). The lesson that morning was about Noah and the story of the flood from the book of Genesis, a subject which I generally find both interesting and incredibly frustrating to discuss. The speaker, who is somebody I love and respect a great deal, made it abundantly clear time and time again that he believes that the story is absolutely factual, perfectly correct and true in every detail. The teacher then said something that stuck in my mind and brought about the idea for this blog post. It was something along the lines of, “I have faith that the flood actually did occur and that it was global and that only Noah’s family and all of the animals on board the ark survived.”
Now, perhaps it shows an over-reliance on knowledge and reason, maybe it shows a lack of faith, but it makes me very uneasy to hear others refer to stories like this as absolute truth. The evidential grounds of a worldwide flood a few thousand years ago are shaky at best and, maybe I’m a heretic, but I have trouble buying into the idea that God would asphyxiate every man, woman, baby, and even animal as part of a grand plan.
Instead, maybe we should look at the story as what it is, a story (pdx will love this). Perhaps it is an attempt by a regional, primitive people to make sense of a natural disaster while still pointing to God as the ultimate divine reality.
So, rather than worrying about whether or not the flood (or creation, or the Tower of Babel, or any other number of stories) actually happened, maybe we should be more concerned with the overarching narrative of the story and the truths of the ideas therein.
A simple Amen!
you made me smile.
the story of noah and the tower of babel are true stories. even if they aren’t literally true.
who told us to take the stories as literal fact? i do not see a disclaimer from the author saying this is a recounting of history. the jews didn’t look at these stories as biographies.
it was all about midrash.
but if you want to interpret these stories as literal retellings and tell others they should do the same. that’s fine too. the world isn’t going to fall apart.
great Matt.you just gave pdx some hope and worse……some cred
Matt, the story of the flood is one that I have taken to be interesting from a mythology perspective. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall from my readings of ancient mythology (native American, and Near Eastern {Babylonian}) that the flood story is one that is fairly common across many different civilizations. That lends some credibility to the factuality of the story. I won’t try to answer your questions about absolute truth, but I have always found it interesting that the flood story is not localized (assuming I am correct in my recolection) to one people group.
Why do you have such a hard time believing that God would “asphyxiate every man, woman, baby, and even animal as part of a grand plan?” If we believe that God is Holy and if we think that life is about Him, then why couldn’t it happen if men were only evil all the time? As you like to say, the metanarrative is about God reconciling the sinful human race to himself through his son. I can see how this would fit in very well to his metanarrative. Now, I don’t like the idea of God drowning every living being, but am I the judge of God?
Does God’s love and long suffering patience come across more starkly because of what was done? Would we know how Holy God is if we didn’t see how seriously he took things? The grace we have now only grows because of what we do see.
could someone please answer my question? who told you that these stories have to be literally and factually true?
please answer this one: could these stories have come from the mind of man? is it possible?
so. the genesis account of the flood is literally and factually true because other cultures share various traditions about great floods? the other stories are obviously from “man” but we have the true story from God? i disagree because that is not a logical assumption. you are more then welcome to believe it and have faith that you are correct. but from my perspective that line of reasoning just doesn’t make sense.
as to your point about god “offing” all of humanity because who are we to judge god. i think i’ve laid out very logical arguments in previous posts that no on has been able to challenge or explain.
could these stories have come from the mind of man? is it possible? i would think that most people would say yes. these are stories that sound like something bronze age people could have easily wrote. so why are we fighting so hard to make sure god gets credit for these?
i have huge issues with arguing that god is holy so he is just exacting justice by collecting 32k virgins as booty” (Num 31), god calling for utter destruction and to show no mercy (Deut 7:2) or taking all the women for yourselves (Deut 20:13).
i could list dozens and dozens of sad and sadistic references that god supposedly uttered. looking at the bible from the perspective of the people who wrote it, it is easy to understand how they could come up with these ideas and attribute them to the jewish war god, yahweh.
so. god took things very seriously in the OT times when he made sure that literally thousands and thousands of people met their death by his hand or his direction. but then he sent jesus and he doesn’t murder people for disobeying the sabbath (Num 15:32) or send various plagues on people.
when god stopped sending plagues and floods?
it just doesn’t make sense and one needs to do so much mental gymnastics to try and make it sort of line up.
and brian. you add nothing to the conversation. please at least say one intelligent thing before mat blocks you from the website. all you do is take pot shots at me. why not try to answer one of my questions. start there.
You are correct, Patrick, that there are many flood stories in the ancient world, but I think it takes a great leap in logic to assume that they are all a product of the Biblical narrative. That conclusion may make sense if you begin with the assumption that the Bible consists entirely of absolute, literal truth, but I would venture to say that a more objective look would lead one to acknowledge that there are other possible conclusions.
Matt.
The Bible is absolute truth. It is God-Breathed. We should all start with that assumption because it is the correct one. The Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true. That is enough for me.
To me the issue isn’t whether the events occurred, it’s in the relating of the information to others. There is ample evidence that great floods have happened. There are oceanic fossils in the desert and on mountain tops. There is ample evidence that mankind began in the area of the fertile crescent, etc. What I read in the O.T. stories are (uneducated and unscientific) explanations offered to uneducated and unscientific people. To answer the questions of the people of the day, the information had to be presented on a level they would accept. Those explanations look kind of foolish in the scientific community today, but that doesn’t mean they are. They were just simple, for simple people.
I see an analogy in how parents handle sex education with their children. “Where do babies come from?” demands a different answer to a 6 year old than it does to a 12 year old, and to a 15 year old. A parent will answer with something appropriate to the level and understanding of the child. But the answers are all true (or should be) and describe the same events. Just because science can explain it on a deeper level doesn’t make lesser levels wrong.
Being a much more “advanced” civilization now, we demand a much more advanced answer to the questions from the O.T., but that doesn’t negate the event, nor does it diminish the way the stories were told at the time. I think they were appropriate explanations for their audience.
Thanks dad, I appreciate your comment a lot. I’m not trying to deny or prove that anything happened, my point is just that it bothers me when absolute positions are taken.
It should also be mentioned that, though the teacher proclaimed his personal belief to be that the Biblical account of the flood as inerrant truth, he added that “there are many who do not” and did not issue any condemnations. I appreciate that.
lol……..nah PDX…… you relax….