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gluadys -> RE: geocentrism as a case study of interpretation (5/30/2008 6:21:53 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
Again, I am not sure of the logic of the atheists who are posting here. Basically there are a few choices here:
1. The Bible refers to certain natural phenomena, and is definitively wrong in it's view of them; 'interpretation' is irrelevant.
2. The Bible refers to certain natural phenomena correctly, but our interpretation of those references is or has been wrong. Requires knowing what interpretation was intended.
3. The Bible refers to certain natural phenomena, appears to be wrong, but in actually our understanding of those phenomena are wrong.
The main point is that the Church changed its interpretation of the immobile earth/mobile sun passages and did so solely on the basis of reason, especially in regard to the new information made available through the use of the newly-invented telescope. The early Protestant reaction was as negative to this idea as the Catholic reaction was, but made the shift earlier than the Catholic church which did not officially recognize the Copernican system until the 19th century.
The reasoning is quite clear in the debates of the time. The plain sense of scripture said the sun moved, not the earth, and that is how the Church had always understood it. Not only the Ptolemaic system, but the earlier ANE system understood the earth to be immobile.
Yet even Cardinal Bellamine, chief prosecutor of Galileo, while adamantly defending this view, also said, that if the contrary were proven beyond doubt, then it should be understood that scripture did not teach --- and had never taught --- that the earth was immobile.
In this regard he was following in the footsteps of earlier Christian theologians who agreed that when scripture appeared to say what was contrary to sense and reason, then the interpretation of scripture should be informed by sense and reason, lest the sacred scripture be brought into disrepute.
This is also the tradition invoked by evolutionary creationists (aka theistic evolutionists). It brings scripture into disrepute to force an interpretation that goes against all the evidence that supports modern science.
What did the original writer intend? No doubt, the plain sense of what is written: that the earth is set on foundations, the heavens held up by pillars, that water fills all space below the earth and above the firmament, and that the heavenly bodies move through the heavens while the earth remains immobile. Why would the original writer, given his earth-bound technologically unassisted perspective conceive anything else? It took a significant feat of reasoning to even come to the conclusion that the earth is a sphere. And that perspective, though accepted by the Church, did not make it into scripture.
But while this understanding of the structure of the cosmos informs the scriptures, does it follow that the writers intended to teach this as science?
When we check out the relevant scriptures we see that the focus in most cases is to praise the Creator by reference to the creation. In other instances, the cosmological references are quite incidental. So we can advance the idea that while the original writers supposed themselves in all sincerity, to be describing an actual cosmological structure, they were not doing so as teachers of doctrine. The teaching is that God is Creator and glorified in creation, whatever the structure of the cosmos is.
So, the Church found itself able to change its interpretation of these passages, and has been so successful that most modern readers don't even notice the original immobile earth perspective. For example, one Psalm speaks of the earth "abiding" forever. I always took for granted that simply meant that the earth existed through all time. In short, I took it for a temporal reference, not a positional reference. It was not until I learned more about language and the history of language, that I found out the original meaning of "abide" and probably the meaning intended by the KJV translators was "to rest still in one place; to dwell in one place" Which is why our home is also called our abode and a person without one is said to have "no fixed abode". But the earth, the Psalmist is saying, does have a fixed abode, and there is abides.
Yet we have no difficulty assigning all of the paraphernalia of the ANE cosmos to "figurative language" or "the language of appearance". In fact, we sometimes even see the opposite error, namely that scripture actually teaches the cosmology we are familiar with.
What the "geocentric" controversy shows is that the Church did take the testimony of creation, as revealed by science, seriously and allowed that information to revamp the way it understood scripture.
Most of the Church has done the same on such issues as the age of the earth, the Big Band, evolution and common descent.
Fundamentalists have chosen to break with a tradition upheld in the Church since at least the second century, deny the gifts of sense and reason God has endowed them with, not to mention the clear testimony of the physical creation itself, in order to hold to a narrowly "literal" interpretation of Genesis. (They clearly don't hold to a literal interpretation anywhere else that it would disagree with their own common sense.)
So to get back to your points.
1. Yes the bible is clearly wrong in some of its presentations of nature--if we hold to the probable understanding of the biblical writer. The question is, does it matter? Why should we expect a writer who knows nothing other than the ANE cosmos to use any other frame of reference? Furthermore, if we allow that the authority of the bible is not impaired by the culture-bound perspective of the author on scientific matters, maybe we should look at what else in the bible is also culture-bound and interpret accordingly.
2. This is the out taken by those who think the bible must be timeless in its references. I think it shows disrespect to the original authors. The Church's pre-Copernican interpretation of the immobile earth was not incorrect. They understood the author because they shared the author's perspective. But the Church also had the wisdom to re-interpret the same passages in light of new and more accurate knowledge of the creation.
3. This is only appropriate when a theory is new and unvalidated. Scientists do have a responsibility to check and re-check their findings, to have their methods and conclusions peer-reviewed, to allow their ideas to be challenged, questioned and if possible falsified. But to continue to claim that we have it all wrong after every scientific objection has been overcome is simply perverse. If the only grounds on which we can deny the current scientific model is to also deny the faithfulness of God in creation (including our own capacities of sense and reason), we are at best playing the ostrich in the sand and at worst embracing heresy. We are not defending the truth and authority of the bible, but only our own egotism.
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