Did Jesus not realize that Noah was a mythical person?
That peculiar question arose last week in the comment thread on David B. Hart’s OTS article where I defended the historicity of Noah. Several readers expressed shock that any purportedly educated Christian could believe that the ark-builder had actually existed. They were truly incredulous that anyone could truly believe such Sunday School nonsense.
One reader that took issue with my “silly childish fundamentalist column” and expressed shock that a “fundamentalist” like me would be allowed to work at First Things. Another commenter joined in the mockery and was certain that the Church Fathers would have disagreed we me about the literal existence of the Antediluvian patriarch. (When I asked them to provide support for that contention, my critics fell silent.)
Foolishly, I thought I could settle the issue with an appeal to authority. I pointed out that Jesus himself had referred to Noah as an actual person who existed in history:
For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
They responded that as a Jew living in first century Palestine, Jesus was surely ignorant of history and wasn’t aware that Noah was simply a mythical figure.
I was stunned. While I chuckled at the personal insults, the implication of their claim is nothing to laugh about. If my interlocutors are correct, then we have reason not only to question the credibility of Jesus but also to believe that God is complicit in deception.
The origin of their faulty thinking appears to be their assumption that “kenotic theology” is not only true but that it is a doctrine that no serious Christian should question. Kenosis is the concept that when Jesus took on human nature he set aside some of his deity, divine nature, or divine attributes. The idea is that when Paul says in Philippians 2:7 that Jesus “emptied himself,” it means he “emptied himself of divine attributes.” This is a rather novel and relatively modern interpretation of the text. As Wayne Grudem notes, we have no reason to believe this is correct:
But does Phillipians 2:7 teach that Christ emptied himself of some of his divine attributes, and does the rest of the New Testament confirm this? The evidence of Scripture points to a negative answer to both questions. We must first realize that no recognized teacher in the first 1,800 years of church history, including those who were native speakers of Greek, thought that “emptied himself” in Philippians 2:7 meant that the Son of God gave up some of his divine attributes.
Indeed, the doctrine only came into vogue in the mid-to-late 1800s. As S.M. Smith (who endorses the doctrine) admits, “All forms of classical orthodoxy either explicitly reject or reject in principle kenotic theology.”
Nevertheless, while I believe that kenotic theology should be rejected because it has no basis in scripture, even those who embrace the doctrine should support my claim that Jesus is not ignorant about the historicity of Noah.
To my knowledge, there are no advocates of kenotic theology that believe that Jesus emptied himself of all divine attributes. Had he done so he would be merely “fully human” and not divine at all. The question then is what divine attributes he would have kept in order to fulfill his mission.
While it would be presumptuous to attempt a complete list, I believe there is one class of attributes that must be included: Jesus would have kept whatever aspects of his divinity are necessary to prevent him from intentionally deceiving his followers.
For instance, there are only a few possibilities for how we can interpret Jesus’ claims about Noah and the days of Noah:
1. He knew that Noah was a real person and was speaking the truth when he claimed the patriarch existed.
2. He knew that Noah was not a real person and intentionally lied when he claimed the patriarch existed.
3. He knew that Noah was not a real person and was merely making a metaphorical or literary reference (e.g., he was referring to Noah like we would refer to Achilles).
4. He did not know that Noah was a mythical figure and in making the claim he was unintentionally misleading his hearers.
All Christians will reject the second option. If we believe (a) lying is a sin and (b) Jesus never sinned, then it follows that he could not have been intentionally lying in this instance. We can also reject the third option since there is no indication that the hearers at Jesus’ time believed Noah was a mythical person.
That leaves the first and fourth options. My contention is that four should also be dismissed for reasons similar to the second. If God the Father is omniscient, then he knew about and approved of every word that would be uttered by the Son during his earthly ministry. If the Father knew that Noah was not a real human and allowed his son to imply that he was, then the Father is culpable in the deception since he not only allowed it to happen but foreordained the spread of this false information.
Even if we believe the Son was “emptied” of some divine knowledge, why would we assume it was necessary to empty himself of the one aspect of human knowledge (presumably at least some humans sometime in history could have know the truth about Noah’s existence) that would prevented him from making a claim that was false? What possible reason would we have for adopting this viewpoint? (One of my critics claimed that even had Jesus known that Noah wasn’t a real person, he would have have gone along with it to accommodate the beliefs of his hearers. This is too silly to even consider. Not only does it imply that Jesus was a deceiver, but it also goes against Jesus nature. How often in his teaching did he upend the beliefs and customs of the age?)
That leaves the “ignorance” position. Could it not be possible that Jesus ignorance was based on the knowledge of first-century Palestine? The first thing that is wrong with this view is that is assumes we have more knowledge about the existence of Noah than could be had during Jesus’ day. Such chronological snobbery is quite unwarranted.
However, if we assume the position is valid, it raises troubling questions: If God allowed Jesus to make false claims under the guise of “human ignorance,” what else did he say that is not true? Are we really to believe that this is the only time that Jesus was mistaken? If not, then what criteria do we use to tell when he was telling the truth based on knowledge that he possessed and when he was making claims based on his ignorance?
Adopting such a perspective seems to be even more presumptive than when the Jesus Seminar decided what Christ “really said” and what could be excluded as apocryphal.
I refuse to believe that the Father would allow the Son to deceive mankind about anything. Because of this belief, I trust that whenever Jesus made a claim about history that he is making an assertion that is trustworthy and factually accurate. I believe that Noah existed because Jesus tells me so. Unless I’m presented with evidence that is more convincing than the words of the Creator of the Universe, I’ll continue to trust that this belief is warranted.
Some Christians may claim they know more than Jesus about Antediluvian history. Others may even claim that the Father would allow his Son to deceive his followers. They certainly have the freedom to express those beliefs. But since I refuse to believe that God tells lies, I won’t be joining them in their self-deception.
April 13th, 2011 | 6:40 am | #1
I appreciate this article but I do have one question. How does this square with Jesus having to grow and learn as a child?
If we take the incarnation seriously, it means that Jesus really was a little baby whose brain needed to develop and grow and be filled with knowledge.
This pertains to the “…when did He know it?” half of your title.
How does kenosis, the incarnation, and the childhood of Jesus work together?
Unlike many Comment Section questions, I am not asking this provocatively and I really don’t know the answer.
April 13th, 2011 | 8:02 am | #2
[...] not realize that Noah was a mythical person? That’s a question I wrestle with over on the Evangel blog. If you’re interested, come over and join the discussion. Comments (0) [...]
April 13th, 2011 | 8:17 am | #3
Joe,
It would be interesting and quite telling to know where the readers of Hart’s OTS article think history ‘does’ start in Scripture. Many might say with Abraham in Genesis 12. Thus, Genesis 1-11 (and by corollary Noah and the worldwide Flood in Noah’s day in Gen. 6-9) is seen as mythological in nature. Forgetting that Gen. 1 is a first hand account by God of what He did and how He did it, Adam and Eve become types with no historical significance, the chronogenealogical lists in Gen. 5 and 11 may or may not be true people in history who lived and died and gave birth to sons according to those number of years, and the whole foundational underpinnings of the book we claim to be sacred Scripture becomes suspect.
When Jesus Himself referred to Noah in Matthew 24, they forget that as God Incarnate He was upholding the accuracy and authority of the Gen. 6-9 account. But, as postmodernists, we don’t believe in the authority and accuracy of Scripture these days anymore anyway, so all kinds of fanciful speculations can be imagined.
April 13th, 2011 | 8:29 am | #4
“We can also reject the third option since there is no indication that the hearers at Jesus’ time believed Noah was a mythical person.”
Dear Joe Carter: I am rather inclined to think of Noah as a historical person, but this dismissal of the third option seems a bit too abrupt. If I refer to the Good Samaritan and what we are to learn from his example, why would it matter what my hearers thought of his actual life? (By the way, I have had people tell me that the Good Samaritan did actually exist, because otherwise Jesus told a lie by telling that parable.)
Steve Swan, good question. I have always thought that as a Divine Person (a Personhood which He never gave up), Jesus knew perfectly all things; however, as possessing a human nature, Jesus was able to limit Himself and grow as truly a human, with human limitations of knowledge.
Here’s another way of asking the same question: Did Jesus know where Antarctica was and what a penguin is? Thoughts from anyone else?
April 13th, 2011 | 8:31 am | #5
Both historicity of ancient events and musings on the knowledge of Jesus are questions spurred by modern rationalism. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s not the mindset of either the Old Testament or the New. If we know that heading into the discussion, it might help.
I find the debates about historicity tiring on both sides. Noah was not historical in any modern sense. There are no birth records, death certificates, dog tags or shipping permits–only hints of corroboration from pagan documents.
For the rationalist, the discussion ends there. But I don’t find rationalism helpful. Noah was a true person in that his story is larger than any historically-buried life he may have had. Even his non-existence is irrelevant. Because mythical stories are intended not for the subject matter, but for those who have ears to hear.
Consider a modern example: Babe Ruth. People still speak of him as “larger-than-life.” That’s accurate, but it’s not a scientific assessment. Biologically, he was just a man–a deeply gifted athlete. But not a superman.
His accomplishments inspired his fans, and translated into something more than 714 home runs. There are mythical aspects to his life: his childhood, the called shot, his obliteration of previous slugging records. These mythical aspects serve to inspire new generations of ballplayers, and that’s the point. We don’t revere Ruth as (only) a museum display. He lives on in those who aspire to athletic greatness.
Getting back to Jesus: if we could prove anything about him, it would cease to be faith. It would be information. The lessons thus learned would be rational, things like: don’t touch a hot stove, obey the speed limit, never throw Pujols the fastball.
Christian faith is a lot more than that. We revere past heroes, certainly. But the object is our own imitation of Christ, not as a historical Jew with perhaps some secret information about the history of the universe. Our task is to imitate in terms of essentials, most especially in the cooperation with grace.
April 13th, 2011 | 8:40 am | #6
Joe:
“We can also reject the third option since there is no indication that the hearers at Jesus’ time believed Noah was a mythical person.”
In The City of God, Augustine opposes both those who consider Noah’s story to be unadorned history, and those who consider it to be only allegory. Thus, it is clear that there was disagreement about the historicity of Noah among 4th and 5th century people. How then can you be certain that first century listeners did not harbor similar beliefs? If there was disagreement among Jesus listeners, then we can’t divine Jesus’ meaning by assuming that his listeners understood those words in a particular way. And if option three remains a possibility, then your further conclusions are unwarranted.
“The first thing that is wrong with this view is that is assumes we have more knowledge about the existence of Noah than could be had during Jesus’ day. Such chronological snobbery is quite unwarranted.”
Again in The City of God, Augustine expends considerable effort calculating the size of the ark and whether it was large enough for all the animals. Part of his argument is that animals which develop spontaneously from “corruption” like flies wouldn’t need to be carried. Would it be “chronological snobbery” for a modern person to argue that we now know more about fly reproduction? It’s clear that we DO know more about a great many things than people in the first century. Simply asserting “chronological snobbery” isn’t an argument. It’s necessary to show why it is unreasonable to think we know more about Noah’s historicity than people in 1st century Palestine.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:07 am | #7
Nickp says:
‘Thus, it is clear that there was disagreement about the historicity of Noah among 4th and 5th century people.’
The logical fallacy of faulty appeal to authority, or appeal to the one, or conjecture, perhaps, since citing one source, and not being able to poll everyone who lived in the 4th and 5th centuries might disprove your point? A variation of Newton’s third law perhaps, ‘For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert.’
To say that there was disagreement in the 4th and 5th centuries is a bit like saying there is disagreement on the issue today, but what does that have to do with the truth of a matter?
Nickp:
‘How then can you be certain that first century listeners did not harbor similar beliefs?’
Equally valid, “How can you be certain that they didn’t?” I Peter 3:20 comes to mind. As an apostle of Christ and 1st century listener and writer, Peter’s opinion on Noah and the Flood doesn’t count? Peter’s reference to the world being destroyed and flooded with water in 2 Peter 3:6 might also have bearing? I think it can certainly be argued that Peter believed in the historicity of Noah and the worldwide Flood of his day and he was a 1st century listener.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:11 am | #8
Joe,
I’m with the commenters above in that you dismiss the third option far too easily. In fact, I came over here from First Thoughts with pretty much exactly that formulation in mind (I wasn’t going to use the word literary, but you get the idea).
It seems to me that you are dismissing the most likely view other than your own (ie the only one that would not involve heresy) in order to make the claim that only your view adequately covers the facts in a non-heretical manner. Quite simply, as the reader above notes, there was dispute in Augustine’s time regarding exactly what parts of Genesis were meant to be read as historical narratives and which parts were not. It seems to me that rather than conduct this debate among people who have built in biases but little knowledge, it might just make sense to ask a Hebrew scripture scholar — preferably a Jewish one — what Jews at the time would have beleived and whether there was uniformity in those beliefs. In any event, simply stating “we have no reason to think that the Jews at the time did not take it literally” is simply ignoring the question by taking your own view as normative. I could just as easily point out that we have no reason to think they did.
Finally — I highly doubt that Jesus knew or could explain how a semiconductor works. Does that make him less omniscient? Or is that just a part of the mystery regarding how the divine and human natures coexisted in one body?
April 13th, 2011 | 9:13 am | #9
Stevep — you are reading Peter with your biases in mind, taking your own view as normative. I would have read Peter as referencing a story that everyone knew to illustrate God’s part in salvation history. The reading you are making is not self evident.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:14 am | #10
I never knew, Jesus was an historical positivist.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:20 am | #11
Chris says:
‘I would have read Peter as referencing a story that everyone knew to illustrate God’s part in salvation history.’
And this is not reading Peter with ‘your own’ biases in mind? Please.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:28 am | #12
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April 13th, 2011 | 9:43 am | #13
Steve Drake:
“The logical fallacy of faulty appeal to authority, or appeal to the one, or conjecture, perhaps, since citing one source, and not being able to poll everyone who lived in the 4th and 5th centuries might disprove your point? ”
What are you talking about?
“To say that there was disagreement in the 4th and 5th centuries is a bit like saying there is disagreement on the issue today, but what does that have to do with the truth of a matter?”
What matter? It is relevant to Joe’s claim that “there is no indication that the hearers at Jesus’ time believed Noah was a mythical person.” Disagreement today doesn’t tell us much about how 1st century listeners interpreted Jesus words, but data from the 4th century gets us closer.
There is disagreement in the 21st century. There was disagreement in the 4th century. It seems, therefore, reasonable to infer that there was disagreement in the 1st century. I’m not using Augustine to attack or defend the historicity of Noah. I’m using Augustine to undermine Joe’s reason for rejecting hypothesis 3. If there was disagreement, we can’t reject hypothesis 3 on the grounds that all ancient people believed Noah was historical.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:46 am | #14
Steve,
Of course that is reading Peter with my own biases in mind. That was actually my point.
My point is far more modest than Joe’s and Stevep’s; mine is that to claim that Noah was a somewhat mythical figure and that the flood account in the gospels should be read as such involves neither logical fallacy nor heresy. I’m not equipped to argue that that view is the correct one. I merely want to point out that nothing that Joe or Stevep (or you) have said has convinced me that it is obviously incorrect. Stevep brought up Peter as if it settled the matter; I merely wanted to note that Peter does not self evidently say what Stevep and Joe would have him say, unless you begin with the presumption that Noah was an actual historical figure and that the flood account is historically accurate.
Clearly I read Peter with my biases in mind. But I do not claim that the reading that I come to, with my biases, is the self evident and obvious one,
April 13th, 2011 | 10:12 am | #15
Chris,
Who is Stevep? Do you mean Nickp? I see a Steve Swan, and myself (Steve Drake), but I don’t see a Stevep on this thread. Is he from another thread?
April 13th, 2011 | 10:15 am | #16
Steve Drake,
You’ve caught me. Comprehension pre-coffee = subpar. I was responding to you and (possibly) some alter-ego of yours of which you are not aware.
April 13th, 2011 | 10:21 am | #17
Where do people get the idea that Jesus would not have know how a semi-conductor works or
what Antarctica or penguins were?
It may sound simplistic, but for starters, he made them, he ought to know about the.
And secondly, how did Jesus know that Nathaniel was sitting under the fig tree? That is an example which is precisely of the same kind as the others. That is, in that example we see Jesus knowing something which he could not have possibly known outside from his Diety.
Nobody told Jesus Nathaniel was there, he saw him there.
What reasons are there for disputing the historicity of Noah, besides seeking “academic credibility”.
What does the simple-straightforward reading of the Bible tell us? That there was this guy, Noah, who built an ark, to whom the animals came 2 by 2, and who was saved through a world-wide flood, by staying in the ark until it stopped floating.
I seriously doubt that anyone not coming to the text with some ulterior motive, would reach another conclusion.
April 13th, 2011 | 10:24 am | #18
Nickp,
Okay, I see what you’re saying, but the 4th century is still not the 1st Century, so to use Augustine in the 4th century to disprove Joe’s claims about listeners in the 1st Century, or to claim that since there was disagreement in the 4th Century, there must also have been disagreement in the 1st Century doesn’t follow.
‘There is disagreement in the 21st century. There was disagreement in the 4th century. It seems, therefore, reasonable to infer that there was disagreement in the 1st century.’
The fallacy of false cause, perhaps?
April 13th, 2011 | 10:29 am | #19
Opinions from 4th century Greeks cannot be read back into 1st century Jews any more than 21st century opinions can be read back into 4th century Greeks.
April 13th, 2011 | 10:31 am | #20
Chris said,
‘unless you begin with the presumption that Noah was an actual historical figure and that the flood account is historically accurate.’
Yes, my presuppositional starting point is that the whole counsel of God is true and an accurate historical account of events since the creation of the world.
If I understand you correctly, you’re calling this biased, and yet one who starts presuppositionally with something else, oh, let’s say, that Scripture is ‘not’ an accurate picture of events in history, is also biased. So whose bias is the right bias to be biased with?
April 13th, 2011 | 10:37 am | #21
Joe,
Let me start off by saying that I do in fact believe in the historicity of Noah and the Flood.
But I also wonder if you have not skipped another possible option — language used to convey an essential truth based on shared cultural knowledge the fact value of which is besides the point….
Now I know that’s a mouthful but let me give an example: In one instance Jesus says “the mustard seed if the smallest of all seeds (Mark 4.31)” Now, we know from science that Jesus is stating something that is factually false (there are varieties of orchid seeds, for example, that can only be seen under a microscope). Of course it makes perfect sense within the cultural context and communicates ably the truth Jesus was trying to tell. Whether or not Jesus knew that some orchid is actually smaller is a point of pure speculation (related in fact to the issue of the nature and extent of Jesus’ self-emptying) but it is no speculation at all to conclude that if Jesus had said to first century Palestinian Jews “the orchid seed is the smallest of all seeds…” he would have been incomprehensible.
Thus we have another possibility to consider — how are we to judge the “truth value” of speech that uses metaphor, simile, etc? Poetic devices in other words? Trees don’t have “hands” to clap. The heavens don’t have mouths to “declare” anything, mountains don’t “sing”… and yet I have no reason at all to doubt the truth of the many statements like these in Psalm and Prophet….
Shakespeare wrote, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” I don’t know how to measure that statement scientifically or historically, but it is profoundly true. Any exegesis that does not at least consider whether our understanding of a particular text might need to take this sort of literary form into account is going to be impoverished in my view…
April 13th, 2011 | 10:39 am | #22
Steve Drake It would be interesting and quite telling to know where the readers of Hart’s OTS article think history ‘does’ start in Scripture.
Good question. Probably sometime between Gen. 12 and the Babylonian exile.
Craig Payne If I refer to the Good Samaritan and what we are to learn from his example, why would it matter what my hearers thought of his actual life? (By the way, I have had people tell me that the Good Samaritan did actually exist, because otherwise Jesus told a lie by telling that parable.)
What would matter is whether the hearers believed Jesus was talking about a specific historical person when he was not. A parable is a particular literary form that does not have to refer to actual people. Had Jesus referred to “Hank the Samaritan,” then we would have reason to assume that maybe he was referring to a specific person.
Todd But the object is our own imitation of Christ, not as a historical Jew with perhaps some secret information about the history of the universe.
Paul claims that if Christ did not rise from the dead, then our faith is in vain. In other words, if a historical Jew named Jesus was not crucified, died, buried, and resurrected, then the “faith” is meaningless.
Nickp In The City of God, Augustine opposes both those who consider Noah’s story to be unadorned history, and those who consider it to be only allegory.
Whoa, before we get too far in the discussion, lets make it clear that Augustine believed that Noah was a real human being that existed in history. The City of God makes clear that we cannot just take the story as an allegory, but must believe that it deals with historical fact.
Thus, it is clear that there was disagreement about the historicity of Noah among 4th and 5th century people.
Indeed there was. There have always been people who have dismissed Scripture as being the Word of God. Augustine, however, was not one of them. He made it quite clear that a solely allegorical reading was not an option.
Would it be “chronological snobbery” for a modern person to argue that we now know more about fly reproduction?
My point about chronological snobbery was in reference to what we can know about the existence of Noah. Questions about the size of the ark and how many animals it could carry are of a different type than question of whether the ark was mythical. Christians can reasonably disagree about details of the event (I myself think it was a local, rather than earth-wide flood), but that does not give us warrant to dismiss the story as fanciful.
Chris It seems to me that you are dismissing the most likely view other than your own (ie the only one that would not involve heresy) in order to make the claim that only your view adequately covers the facts in a non-heretical manner.
Perhaps I am dismissing it too quickly. If so it should be easy for those who disagree with me to provide some evidence that the hearers of Jesus day believed Noah to be a mythical person. The problem I have is that some people assume that must be the alternative since they want to avoid accepting the historicity of Noah.
. . .it might just make sense to ask a Hebrew scripture scholar — preferably a Jewish one — what Jews at the time would have believed and whether there was uniformity in those beliefs.
I agree. So let’s have the people who assume that the story was mythical provide evidence that the devout Jews in Jesus day would have taken for granted that he was making a non-historical reference.
Finally — I highly doubt that Jesus knew or could explain how a semiconductor works. Does that make him less omniscient?
That’s not really relevant to the debate since we are only talking about what Jesus said, not about knowledge that he was silent about. However, I’d be curious to why you believe that Jesus could not explain how a semiconductor works. I’m not saying I agree or disagree. I’m just curious to how you come to that conclusion.
TBH I never knew, Jesus was an historical positivist.
So anyone who believes actual historical persons were real is a “historical positivist?” Does believing that George Washington actually existed make me a historical positivist too?
Nickp There was disagreement in the 4th century. It seems, therefore, reasonable to infer that there was disagreement in the 1st century.
As I said, there was certainly disagreement in the 1st century. The Romans, for instance, likely disagreed about whether Noah had existed.
April 13th, 2011 | 10:45 am | #23
Pastor C.,
Good to speak with you again my friend,
You say,
‘Thus we have another possibility to consider — how are we to judge the “truth value” of speech that uses metaphor, simile, etc? Poetic devices in other words?’
Are you saying that Gen. 6-9 and the account of Noah and the worldwide flood fit this poetic structure, with metaphor and simile?
April 13th, 2011 | 10:55 am | #24
Regarding semiconductors and penguins: The Bible says that Jesus “grew in wisdom.” Does that mean He learned things He did not know before? Did Jesus or did He not learn anything at all during His lifetime?
If He did, then His human nature was limited to what He could have known. (This rules out knowledge of semiconductors and penguins.) If He did not learn anything at all during His lifetime, it seems His “humanity” is a farce.
This does not mean anything about Noah’s historicity. But it would keep alive Option 3 in Mr. Carter’s list of available options.
April 13th, 2011 | 10:57 am | #25
Greetings Everyone,
As I read this thread, two thoughts came to my mind. First — and this happens over and over again throughout the Christian blogging community, even non-Christian… — was the attempt to rationalize or understand that which is simply unknowable. Information regarding how Jesus grew and gained knowledge throughout his childhood is not given to us. It is beyond us. The same could be said regarding Noah, if we view that subject with only a scientific or historic context in mind. The attempt to glean answers to unanswerable questions has plagued Western civilization ever since Plato. Sometimes that dogged determination does yield positive results. But more often, especially in the context of Christendom, it only bears fruit of disagreement and devision. Debates rage on, ad nauseam.
The second thought was an appreciation for something I learned from the Orthodox Church. The Eastern mind wasn’t influenced by Platonic thinking as we have been. Thus, for them, when encountering such questions and wonders, it is logical and intellectually consistent to simply say, “It’s a mystery,” and be at peace with that.
There is a deeper issue, however. It is one each of us will wrestle with regardless if we’re able to find answers or not. Will you — will I — submit to God or not? Will we trust that he knows the unknowable or will we [force] him to conform to our logic and understandings? Of course, a higher degree of trust evolves in direct proportion to the relationship. When we first meet God at the foot of the cross, trust is a fleeting thing. As we seek to know him more, we become more secure in him.
I’m not arguing that we should not attempt to find answers, to debate questions, or to know all we are capable of knowing. I simply point out that there does come a time when the “question” needs to be set aside — answered or not — and remember that the “relationship” is central to our life. Everything else pales in comparison to that.
C.S. Lewis made this point very clear in Mere Christianity when he said:
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
Blessings to all,
Michael
April 13th, 2011 | 10:57 am | #26
P.S. Please note that I agree: as a Divine Person Jesus knew and knows all things.
The Incarnation does seem to lead into such puzzles.
April 13th, 2011 | 11:04 am | #27
Steve Drake,
Godd to “hear” from you again. I hope you and yours are well. Your question: “Are you saying that Gen. 6-9 and the account of Noah and the worldwide flood fit this poetic structure, with metaphor and simile”?
Not for me they don’t. But I am not ready to read out of the faith as heretical those who may read that or other parts of Genesis that way.
Additionally, I think that some of this kind of discussion generates way more heat than light. Whether or not during his time on earth Jesus had knowledge of how a semi-conductor functioned (and at what age) is the sort of thing that we all love to make fun of when Medieval Scholasticism or the Teachers of the Law in Jesus’ day did it. Are these question not simply modern versions of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin” or “will there be marriage in heaven”. Nothing wrong with asking the question mind you, but let’s not go running people out of the camp of orthodoxy based on speculation.
Again, to be clear, I don’t think that Joe Carter in raising the point, was engaging in that kind of argument. But we can see how quickly it gets to that kind of thing for some….
April 13th, 2011 | 11:13 am | #28
I watched a video at church last Wednesday as part of my church’s Lenten soup supper and Bible study. The video is a series by N.T. Wright. I was shocked that Wright said things like (I’m paraphrasing, by the way), “Jesus read the Old Testament and began to see Himself as the Messiah.” He seemed to argue that Jesus eventually came to believe He is the Son of God. I’ve always been convinced that Jesus has always been aware of His deity. It’s hard to imagine God not knowing who He is.
April 13th, 2011 | 11:25 am | #29
Orthodoxdj,
It is a lot less simple than you are making it. Jesus was born an infant, as all other humans are. He (presumably) had to learn how to walk, talk, write, etc. If we can imagine God Incarnate having to learn, develop, grow, physically why not in his spiritual identity? We are not pagans. We do not assume that Jesus sprung from Mary fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus.
There is nothing in orthodoxy that compels us to believe that the infant Jesus knew about penguins, semi-conductors, or the necessity of his own death. Such a child would be no child at all. He would be freakish — a fully adult mind in an infant’s body.
As to what Jesus self-understanding looked like exactly at each point in his life, well, we are treading on the ground of Mystery. We ought to do so lightly.
April 13th, 2011 | 11:35 am | #30
david c,
With respect, I must say that I don’t find quite so laughable questions like:
“how many angels can dance on the head of a pin”
“will there be marriage in heaven”
Behind those questions are real metaphysical issues. The relationship between spirit and matter for one.
When I asked my initial question this morning about kenosis and the childhood of Jesus it was because I really want to know. I am the father of a toddler and I stare in wonder at her mental development. I am in awe of my Saviour and wonder about His mind, His human and divine mind.
I am in agreement with you that we ought not to run people out of orthodoxy who come to different conclusions. I also agree that the Bible tells us next to nothing about Jesus’ childhood. Speculation shouldn’t lead to essential doctrine but, hey…haven’t you ever wondered when Baby Jesus knew what he knew?
By the way, I believe Noah was a real guy.
April 13th, 2011 | 11:42 am | #31
“It’s hard to imagine God not knowing who He is.”
Dear Orthodoxdj: I agree completely. But what about the human Jesus?
April 13th, 2011 | 11:48 am | #32
Steve Swan,
I’m afraid I haven’t communicated myself very well if it appears that I was saying that such speculations are something ~I~ find laughable. When I was in seminary one of my theology professors made a very good case for the discussion about “angels on the head of a pin” being theologically relevant…I am not against speculation per se.
Rather my point was twofold: 1)we are sinfully proud and preoccupied with the present. ie we almost always privilege our own concerns. Our concerns are serious and worthy of deep thought, the concerns of our “ignorant” predecessors are laughable and unworthy.
(I think that point of view is rank foolishness by the way) and 2) let’s be gentle/charitable with one another when it comes to what we can acknowledge are speculative discussions.
I too wonder sometimes what was going on in the infant and young Jesus’ head. I just don’t want anyone trying to put my orthodoxy on trial based on those musings…
April 13th, 2011 | 11:50 am | #33
Lest we close off option #3 precipitously or unjustly, is there any evidence that 1st century Jews would have taken Noah to be metaphorical and not a historical figure?
April 13th, 2011 | 11:54 am | #34
It would seem to me that Wittgenstein’s understanding of language games might help in this regard. When we say “Noah” and when Jesus said “Noah”, might it be that there are different “games” being played when using that word. When Jesus referred to Noah he wasn’t referring to the brute fact of his existence (he never referred to things in that manner). So, to speak about whether Jesus believed in Noah the way we would refer to Noah is to confuse the different games we playing with our language. In order for us to answer our question, we would need a separate source that was using our language game. We don’t.
April 13th, 2011 | 11:59 am | #35
[...] evangelicals really think Jesus was omniscient as a 30 year old? As a 15 year old? As an infant? As an embryo? [...]
April 13th, 2011 | 12:01 pm | #36
It seems to me omniscience would be an intolerable burden to anyone who was truly human, even if truly divine at the same time. How would one deal with knowing exactly what a person one was conversing with was going to say before he or she said it? And although I suppose it wouldn’t have been a problem for Jesus, it would mean you knew the punch line to a joke before anyone told it to you.
It raises the same problems as a time traveller going backwards and knowing the future. You would have to be careful not to do anything to alter it. If Joseph was going to smash his thumb with a hammer, Jesus had to refrain from warning him.
We can evade serious problems with God’s omniscience, because God is not within time. But once the Incarnation takes place, unless you assume Jesus’s knowledge was somehow limited, you have an omniscient being within time.
April 13th, 2011 | 12:07 pm | #37
Is there any evidence that when Jesus spoke of Noah, He was playing a “language game” that did not have Noah’s historical existence in mind? That 1st century Jews would have played the same game?
April 13th, 2011 | 12:08 pm | #38
“Paul claims that if Christ did not rise from the dead, then our faith is in vain. In other words, if a historical Jew named Jesus was not crucified, died, buried, and resurrected, then the “faith” is meaningless.”
And yet, Joe, that is exactly not what Saint Paul said.
April 13th, 2011 | 12:16 pm | #39
And no man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man who IS IN HEAVEN.
John 3:13
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
Colossians 2:9
I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
Luke 10:18
While Christ was on earth, He was also “in heaven,” for within Him was the fullness of divinity. He had divine as well as human knowledge. This was demonstrated over and over again in the New Testament by his knowing the thoughts of others. He also knew what was going to happen to Him in the future. Having heavenly as well as human knowledge He remembered Satan falling like lightning from heaven. The notion that He did not have available to Himself knowledge that only God could have is ludicrous, and contradicts the fundamental Christian belief that He possessed a divine as well as human nature. Within Him was the fulness of both.
As for Catholic interpretation of the scriptures, it is expressed clearly by Leo XIII in the encyclical Providentissimus Deus, which reiterates what was dogmatically declared at the councils of Trent and Vatican I:
Catholics are not free to interpret the scriptures in a manner that is contrary to what the Holy Spirit fashioned into the traditional belief of the Church (that which “has been held and is held” by the Church), which is also expressed in the unanimous agreement of the Church Fathers. Today, Catholics are better off looking at the Catechism of the Catholic Church than at modern Catholic scripture scholarship for guidance on the interpretation of the scriptures. In the Catechism there is no trace of the notion that the scriptural account of Noah is akin to one of Aesop’s fables, being merely a fable but one with a “moral to the story.” The Fathers unanimously believed that God really has intervened in human history miraculously, and that an account of that divine intervention is recorded in the books of the Bible that they unanimously believed were historical in nature. In so far as modern “Catholic” scripture scholarship is contrary to this unanimous belief of the Fathers, it is heterodox.
It is reasonable to believe there was a great flood that Noah and his family survived. Whether the known world or the entire world was flooded, or whether Noah and his family were actually the only human beings left on earth, or just the only people who survived as far as Noah and his family knew, is arguable. It is interesting, and tends to support the historicity of the story of Noah, that so many peoples around the world have a collective “remembrance” of a great flood with a handful of survivors in their cultural heritage. That Christ, Who knew all things in His divinity, refers to Noah and the flood as an actual historical event, ought to end the debate as to its historicity for believers.
The nature of that historicity may not be what we consider “history” by modern standards , but that does not mean the story of Noah is only a myth. According to Pius XII in Humani Generis:
It is time to “administer the medicine” as the “disease has grown inveterate.”
April 13th, 2011 | 12:30 pm | #40
Harry,
Pius XII’s did not utter the last words regarding Catholic biblical scholarship. In fact, he pretty much uttered the first words, as far as modern Catholic scholarship is concerned. Pius XII’s strong support for the reality of Adam and Eve, for example, is pretty much a distant memory in official Catholic biblical pronouncements, although many Catholics still take the Bible a lot more literally than official Church documents do, and certainly much more literally than leading Catholic biblical scholars do.
April 13th, 2011 | 12:53 pm | #41
Todd And yet, Joe, that is exactly not what Saint Paul said.
“And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.”
April 13th, 2011 | 1:58 pm | #42
Option #3 seems very likely to me, because it is the simplest explanation. I’m in agreement with Craig Payne and Chris.
Therefore, we don’t quite know what Jesus thought of Noah.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:25 pm | #43
KFB Option #3 seems very likely to me, because it is the simplest explanation.
If Option #3 is very likely than it should be no problem to find supporting evidence for that position. Would you (or anyone who agrees with that position) care to show up the evidence that you found convincing?
April 13th, 2011 | 2:28 pm | #44
“We can also reject the third option since there is no indication that the hearers at Jesus’ time believed Noah was a mythical person.”
What would cause anyone to disagree with Joe Carter’s rejection of the third option?
April 13th, 2011 | 2:35 pm | #45
Interestingly, right before Jesus mentions Noah, he says, “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36). This indicates that there is at least one thing Jesus doesn’t know.
Another possibility here is that Jesus himself did not mention Noah, but that the words are Matthew’s. That may be unthinkable for many conservative Christians, but contemporary Catholic scholars certainly do no maintain that Jesus said every word attributed to him in the Gospels.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:36 pm | #46
Joe C
We are making guesses here based on incomplete information, correct? So my rationale is my own Occam’s Razor.
Jesus could refer to Noah by name simply to identify the story which believers were already familiar. There doesn’t seem to be any necessary conclusion that simply because Jesus used Noah’s name, that Noah must have existed or that Jesus must have believed such.
I also don’t see why it would necessarily matter to the audience either. The point Jesus is making might simply be the characteristic equivalence between the circumstances.
Therefore, I don’t quite understand what evidence you require, but I really don’t understand why that evidence even matters.
Sorry if I’m missing something.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:40 pm | #47
KFB says,
‘Therefore, we don’t quite know what Jesus thought of Noah.’
I heartily, but respectfully, disagree. When Jesus referred to Noah in Matthew 24:37-39, he was taking his listeners back to Genesis 6-9. His listeners as students of Scripture or attendees in a temple where these things were taught, would understand the analogy. Jesus in referring to His own second coming, was drawing the parallel with the days before Noah. A real event, in real history. Otherwise, the analogy to his own literal second coming in real history loses coherence and punch.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:42 pm | #48
left something out…I’m not quite agreeing with option #3 as written. I’m not saying that “Jesus knew Noah was not a real person”.
I’m only agreeing with the second part of option 3 that says it was only a literary reference.
What Jesus thought about Noah, I don’t think we can say for certain.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:44 pm | #49
What would cause anyone to disagree with Joe Carter’s rejection of the third option?
It strikes me as extremely common for those who do not believe Adam and Eve were real persons to speak of them as if they were. Why not Noah? If you read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it says:
Recent authoritative Catholic documents move even further away from the historical reality of Adam and Eve. Nevertheless, Catholics do not hesitate to talk of the sin of Adam or to discuss the meaning of the story of Adam and Eve as if they were real persons.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:46 pm | #50
Pastor C.,
I notice you seem to want to infer that anytime someone disagrees with your position you want to say that they are somehow narrowly and unjustly confining the bounds of orthodoxy. This is a nice rhetorical device on your part to marginalize someone :)
The question I think on the table is whether Noah was an historical figure, and whether Christ thought of him as such. No one has mentioned anyone being outside the bounds of orthodoxy, but I notice you regularly bring it up.
What are the facts you want to bring to bear to say that Noah was not historical, and that Genesis 6-9 is not an accurate historical narrative of what happened in real history?
April 13th, 2011 | 2:53 pm | #51
Craig,
I don’t claim to understand the hypo-static union. What I do believe is that Jesus’s deity was never diminished.Veiled? Sure.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:54 pm | #52
I will do some research into whether first-century Jews considered Noah to be an historical figure, but I don’t anticipate much success. I do rather imagine that if you could go back in a time machine and ask them, they would find it a bewildering question, since I kind of doubt that they even gave it a thought. Contemporary biblical scholars believe the story of Noah and the flood was edited together from two sources that are not altogether consistent. One wonders whether those who edited the text considered the two accounts historical, or whether they even thought in those terms at all. We may be projecting our modern sensibilities back on first-century Jews who would have been bewildered by them. Certainly if Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source and changed his text to suit their own purposes, they could not have looked upon Mark’s writing as historical/journalistic truth.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:55 pm | #53
About that evidence that 1st century Jews would have understood Jesus’ reference to Noah as metaphorical ~ is anybody making any headway on it?
Without any evidence to that effect, Option #3 is purely speculative. An option that is purely speculative is not very parsimonious in my book and falls to the side under Occam’s Razor.
But I’m willing to consider any evidence for it.
April 13th, 2011 | 2:57 pm | #54
Evidence of the language game: Jesus refers to John the Baptist as Elijah.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:09 pm | #55
How exactly does Joe know what the audience thought of Noah? It seems like reverse snobbery to think that 1st Century people might not themselves have had mixed opinions about whether or not the Noah story was literally true, literally false or had at least some elements of metaphore. I don’t doubt for a moment if someone in ancient Greece referred to the Trojan hoarse there would be a mix of views in the audiance that ranged from “yea that’s exactly what happened” to “yea that’s our mythical story!”.
Joe’s logic seems to rely upon an unspoken assumption that the Bible purports to provide a literal transcript of everything Jesus said as well as what hecklers, disagreers and other said. In fact, it clearly has only a tiny fraction of all that. So clearly the Bible only has the fraction that it thinks is important.
The passage Joe cites clearly does not seem to consider Noah’s literal existence to be all that important. Rather it’s the fact of being unaware and going about one’s usual business that is being emphasized. The mental image here is of people partying and then getting caught in shock as the flood sweeps them away and the point of the paragraph is clearly *that will happen again*.
What Joe misses is probably the most obvious point, if the Noah’s existence is what’s so important then it would have been quite easy for Jesus to simply add a “and don’t think for a second that Noah didn’t really exist and that didn’t really happen despite what those with doubts say” or if at that time everyone really believed it literally happened exactly like that he could have easily inserted a warning about ‘what people will say’….which would have been quite easy given the whole infinite knowledge thing.
This does subvert the original charge against Jesus, though, that he was expressing ignorance about Noah that one wouldn’t expect from God himself. We aren’t told if Jesus was questioned about Noah’s reality, if people did or did not think he was real and so on. For all we know someone did say something like “yea but did the flood really cover the whole world and kill everyone but Noah and his family, I can’t see that” and Jesus might have said something like “don’t focus on that, focus on what I just said because that’s what’s important” and that didn’t make the final cut so to speak.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:09 pm | #56
Jesus lets us know in the context that He is talking about John: “For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Matthew 11:13-14). He equates Elijah to John. It is transparent.
But how does that compare when He speaks of Noah? He gives no indication that He is speaking of anyone else besides Noah.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:11 pm | #57
How do those who hold that Jesus had divine knowledge reconcile the point David C. made about Mark 4:31? Did Jesus not know about seeds smaller than a mustard seed? Did he pitch the message for the audience’s understanding? Or what? I’m curious.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:15 pm | #58
Ray,
Jesus, like you and me, used figures of speech.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:16 pm | #59
@ Jeff Doles
All the options are speculative, otherwise there wouldn’t be options… only the answer, yes?
April 13th, 2011 | 3:17 pm | #60
Boonton #55
I see an awful lot of speculation in your post, but where is there any evidence?
Also, it seems unreasonable to suppose that unless Jesus says, “and don’t think for a second that Noah didn’t really exist and that didn’t really happen despite what those with doubts say” that He must therefore be speaking metaphorically. Normally the presumption would be that one is speaking literally unless there is some sort of indication that one is being metaphorical.
For example, if I say, “I left my iPhone on the dresser this morning,” the presumptive understanding of that would be that the iPhone and the dresser are both literal, not metaphorical. I don’t have to issue a statement such as “and don’t think for a second that that iPhone and dresser don’t really exist and that I didn’t really leave the one on the other.”
April 13th, 2011 | 3:31 pm | #61
KFB #59,
When I hear hoofbeats, I think of horses, not zebras. Now, of course, it is a speculation to suppose that I am hearing a horse. But it would be a greater speculation to suppose that I am hearing a zebra here in Seffner, FL. It is more likely that it is a horse I here, seeing that there a many horses within a few miles of here. So there is more evidence to support a conclusion of horse than of zebra. The less speculation involved, the more parsimonious the supposition.
When Jesus speaks of Noah, there is no evidence in the text that He is being metaphorical. Just as when Jesus speaks of John the Baptist, in Matthew 11, He has john the Baptist in mind.
OTOH, when He speaks of Elijah in that context, in verse 14, we know that He is actually referring to John the Baptist, who is the antecedent of the “he” in verse 14, having just been mentioned in verse 13. So, because there is evidence, we can see that a comparison is being made between John and Elijah.
All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best. Since there is no evidence that when Jesus speaks of Noah He does not actually have Noah in mind, the simplest explanation is that He actually has Noah in mind, since He speaks of Noah and there is no evidence of metaphor.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:43 pm | #62
Ray Ingles How do those who hold that Jesus had divine knowledge reconcile the point David C. made about Mark 4:31?
The mustard seed was the smallest plant cultivated in first century Palestine. Because of this, it was used proverbially for being small.
It would be akin to us saying that there is “nothing smaller than an atom.” Of course, we know that there are things smaller (e.g., quarks) but it would be tiresome if we had to add such qualifications when our audience would know what we were saying.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:43 pm | #63
Jeff,
that He must therefore be speaking metaphorically.
Not quite my argument. The original argument is exclusionary. Jesus talked about Noah, either he didn’t know Noah was fiction or he lied….either way that’s trouble for believing Jesus was divine…
The problem with speculation is in that argument. Why are we limited to only those possibilities? Maybe Jesus was challenged and said Noah was fictional! Maybe he said the opposite! Lots of other maybes may have happened. Joe asserts he knows what Jesus’s audience thought of the Noah story. How? He can’t unless he has some other source besides the Bible. It’s pretty clear the one passage that was put in the Bible is focused on the idea of people partying and getting caught unaware and does NOT say much of anything about the literal existence of Noah. Joe speculates that everyone was taking Jesus to be asserting Noah’s literal existence because, well, I guess because he thinks people weren’t sophisticated enough in the 1st century to doubt the story was 100% literal but somehow got that way by the 4th-5th century.
But that’s not really the issue. Say for a moment that there was a lot of diversity of opinion about just how literal Noah’s story was at the time, maybe even debate. In giving the statement, then, the audience would have quickly taken that by ignoring the question of how literal the story was, he was getting at something else. If that alone was the case, then Jesus would have to be acquitted of both the charges of being ignorant about Noah’s nature (which one wouldn’t expect of God) or being dishonest about it. Or then again maybe some line of statements got cut from the actual book.
Either way the original argument is basically of the form
“Jesus here was either A or B”
“Since either A or B cast doubt on Jesus’s divinity”
“Therefore Jesus wasn’t divine”….
The flaw in the argument is in the premise. It could be A or B, or C, D, E, F and lots of other possibilities. If you can’t prove it can ONLY be A or B, there’s no argument. Clearly I showed there’s at least a C or D and probably lots more possibilities. Without the first premise, there’s no argument.
Likewise Joe seems to accept the first premise in order to reach a different conclusion…namely that you have to believe Noah was literal in all aspects or else you can’t believe Jesus was divine. This argument too depends upon limiting the field of possibilities to only a few. But limiting possibilities is often a lot harder than it appears.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:47 pm | #64
Joe Carter writes: “If Option #3 is very likely than it should be no problem to find supporting evidence for that position. Would you (or anyone who agrees with that position) care to show up the evidence that you found convincing?”
To this KFB replies: “Jesus could refer to Noah by name simply to identify the story which believers were already familiar. There doesn’t seem to be any necessary conclusion that simply because Jesus used Noah’s name, that Noah must have existed or that Jesus must have believed such. I also don’t see why it would necessarily matter to the audience either. The point Jesus is making might simply be the characteristic equivalence between the circumstances. Therefore, I don’t quite understand what evidence you require, but I really don’t understand why that evidence even matters.”
I think this is the point. I don’t see why this issue seems to be carrying the heavy baggage it is now carrying.
The thread is now about two topics: (1) Was Noah a historical figure? (I think the answer is yes.)
(2) Is it proven that Noah was a historical figure by the fact that Jesus mentions him? As KFB puts it, in my paraphrase, no one knows for sure, but it really DOESN’T MATTER. In other words, the answer to this question does not say anything orthodox or unorthodox about one’s view of Jesus.
And no one has directly answered my question yet: Did Jesus ever learn ANYTHING AT ALL during His life?
If the answer to this question is “Yes,” then Jesus, even while remaining God the Son and thus omniscient, accepted the typical human limitations of knowledge in His human nature.
If your answer to the question is “No, Jesus never had to learn a single thing, because He was and is God”–if that’s your response, I’d like to hear it.
April 13th, 2011 | 3:56 pm | #65
Hmmm,
All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best. Since there is no evidence that when Jesus speaks of Noah He does not actually have Noah in mind, the simplest explanation is that He actually has Noah in mind, since He speaks of Noah and there is no evidence of metaphor.
Of course he had ‘Noah in mind’. Suppose for a moment that he was speaking metaphorically. How would the passage read? I mean Joe seems to be saying if Jesus said something like:
Achilles fought hard thinking he was invincible, but when the arrow hit him in the heel he was taken by surprise,….so do people go about etc etc but with the coming of the Son of Man etc etc…
Well that sounds exactly like the real quote yet that’s ‘speaking metaphorically’ yet it looks almost the same to me with the only difference being in the modern world no one thinks Achilles is anything but a myth.
April 13th, 2011 | 4:01 pm | #66
Flannery O’Connor once said that a true realist was a realist of distances. She believed her stories, in their grotesque distortions, to be more realistic than any of the so called ‘realist’ writers. For her, any attempt to disect things to their ‘essential parts’ was not an act of perception, but an act of blindness. So, when O’Connor would speak of, for example, a bull goring an old woman, she is speaking of a bull goring an old woman, but the reality of the distance involved in that goring is actually distorted if one isolates the description into its, supposed, “real” meaning. Talking of “metaphor” in this context is very misleading because it supposes a single image to be working on two different levels, levels that can be separated and isolated. Flannery could not say what she said any better than saying it in this manner and she always believed that any commentary (or disection) of a story would never approach the unity the story expressed. Just as a vase can be broken into small pieces in order to find out all of its interesting ‘realities’ (the dating, where the clay came from, etc…), in order to do so one must actually shatter the vase itself. The vases reality only exists in its unity. It seems to me that “Noah” exists in much the same way: like the ox and the vase. He is not “metaphoric” but he is also not “literal”. And to subject the story to either is to actually distort his reality.
April 13th, 2011 | 4:02 pm | #67
Boonton,
I’m looking for any evidence that Jesus was speaking metaphorically (nothing in the text suggests it) or that the Jews would have taken Him to be speaking metaphorically. I keep seeing speculations and suppositions that this was so, but, so far, I don’t think anybody has come up with any actual evidence to that effect.
April 13th, 2011 | 4:11 pm | #68
That I get Jeff, but the problem is that for the ‘exclusionary’ argument to work you not only need ‘no evidence that he was speaking metaphorically’ but also positive evidence that he was NOT speaking metaphorically. Without that both the original argument (that Jesus couldn’t be divine since he didn’t ‘know’ Noah was not literal) and Joe’s revision of that argument (Noah must be literal or else you can’t believe Jesus was divine) collapse.
April 13th, 2011 | 4:14 pm | #69
I’d like someone to produce a ‘rewrite’ of what the passage would look like if Jesus was ‘speaking metaphorically’ (or in any way that would be consistent with not taking Noah perfectly literally). I suspect there wouldn’t be much of a real difference in the way the passage reads. Certainly my ‘rewrite’ using Achilles sounds a lot like the original even though no one would believe it is asserting Achilles literal existence in history.
April 13th, 2011 | 4:47 pm | #70
Hi, David Nickol,
You wrote:
The infallibility of the Church applies with its fullest force to the infallible authority of general councils in union with the pope. Trent and Vatican I dogmatically stated that Catholic interpretation of scripture cannot be contrary to the traditional belief of the Church and the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.
While that requirement, it seems to me, requires us to believe that our “first parents” fell from grace as a historical fact, there was no unanimous interpretation of the creation accounts in Genesis among the Fathers. Augustine cautioned against a strictly literal interpretation. We are to believe the human race had “first parents.” Our “first parents” are referred to in the Catechism repeatedly.
In JP II’s statements on evolution, such as in his famous speech to the pontifical academy of the sciences, he affirms what Pius XII said about the restrictions on how evolution is compatible with the Catholic faith. The exception to this was polygenism. He said nothing at all about that.
That doesn’t mean Catholics may be certain polygenism is not contrary to the faith. His silence on the matter may have been holding the door open for a future pope to revisit this issue and take a different position. Some day a pope may issue a new statement on evolution and say that polygenism is not contrary to the faith. I personally doubt that will happen.
You wrote:
Jesus also said, “I and the Father are one.” in John 10:30. All the knowledge of the Father was, no doubt, accessible to Jesus. That wouldn’t prevent Him from speaking from His humanity and honestly saying that there are some things “only the Father knows.” Doing that wouldn’t mean he couldn’t know it in His divinity.
You wrote:
Many contemporary Catholic scholars are wrong. Such a position is contrary to the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum:
April 13th, 2011 | 4:47 pm | #71
Steve,
You wrote (of me):
“I notice you seem to want to infer that anytime someone disagrees with your position you want to say that they are somehow narrowly and unjustly confining the bounds of orthodoxy. This is a nice rhetorical device on your part to marginalize someone.”
Marginalize? moi? Ummm no. I was not trying to do that and if you think that I was you are laboring under a mis-impression. In the original post Joe Carter wrote rather forcefully that his way of understanding the reference to Noah is the only way the doesn’t make Jesus a liar (and therefore not holy) or ignorant (and therefore not divinely omniscient). My response was to say that while I may agree that Noah was an historical figure, the exegetical case is not always so cut and dried. That is to say there are interpretive options he does not seem to want to consider. I say nothing about orthodoxy in that post and in my later comments make a plea for broadening the bands of tolerance and being charitable when it comes to matters speculative. I can’t find any attempted marginalization in that at all and wonder how you do?
You then write:
“The question I think on the table is whether Noah was an historical figure, and whether Christ thought of him as such.”
Again, we see it differently. That is not the only question on the table, not for me at least (and not for a good many other of the commenters here).
You conclude:
“What are the facts you want to bring to bear to say that Noah was not historical, and that Genesis 6-9 is not an accurate historical narrative of what happened in real history?”
Heh. Apparently you didn’t read my posts very carefully. I didn’t say that. Just the opposite, in fact. I stated plainly my belief in the historicity of Noah and the Flood.
BTW while we are on matters of ‘orthodoxy’, I did want to make a grammatical quibble (I know it’s bad form but I will anyway, so sure am I of your charity). A writer cannot “infer” he can only imply. Writers/speakers imply, hearers/readers infer….
April 13th, 2011 | 4:48 pm | #72
We should not presume that whenever a person says something it should taken metaphorically. Rather, we should presume that a person is speaking literally unless there is some reason to suggest metaphor. That is how we function in normal conversation. So, to go back to my earlier example, if I say, “I left my iPhone on top of my dresser,” the presumptive understanding would be that I literally left the real iPhone, which actually belongs to me, on top of a real dresser. There is no point in looking for a metaphorical meaning there unless there is some evidence for one in the context of our conversation or of the circumstances. Otherwise conversation would slip quickly into incoherence and communication would be lost.
So, in the question of whether a saying should be taken literally or metaphorically, I look for evidence that it was meant metaphorically. If I find none, I presume it was meant non-metaphorically. One can speculate all they want about metaphors, but if there is no evidence to support it, I will not find it convincing.
If Jesus was being metaphorical in His reference to Noah, there should be some sort of evidence to support such a conclusion. Are there any clues in the text that should lead us to think of metaphor? Any evidence that Jews of the 1st century were accustomed to thinking of Noah in metaphorical, non-historical ways?
April 13th, 2011 | 7:30 pm | #73
Jeff, I believe in a historical Noah and a historical flood; and I think Jesus was citing something he (correctly) believed actually happened because he knew the citation would clearly communicate to his hearers what He wanted to say.
But if (counterfactually) I believed that the story in which Noah appeared was itself a symbol rather than a historical account, then I would think that Jesus was citing that symbol because he knew the citation would clearly communicate to his hearers what He wanted to say.
Notice the common factor there?
Now, you ask for evidence that first century Jews had SOME expectation of non-historicity in their Scriptures. How about Daniel and Revelations — or do you say there was a literal woman in the sky and a literal dragon who swept literal stars? The large period containing Daniel and Revelations is RIFE with such uses of stories to convey a lesson. This doesn’t prove that Noah and the Flood are precisely that kind of story; in fact, they’re obviously not apocalyptic literature. But that doesn’t exclude them from being a “mere story” of one of the many older types (as opposed to being a historical account), nor from being USED as a story even though they’re true (which is, indeed, what Christ and, later, Peter are actually doing with them).
Again, I actually believe the story of Noah is actual history, and we’ll meet him someday. My point is simply that this whole thing is indeed a false dilemma.
-Wm
April 13th, 2011 | 9:27 pm | #74
Pastor C.,
Thanks for your clarification. I read where you believe Noah is an historical figure, but I wonder why you bring up ‘poetic structure, metaphor, simile’, if not to “imply” that we should be reading Genesis 6-9 and Matthew 24:37-39 that way in regards to Noah. I realize you have not said that, but I wonder what you are driving at in regards to Noah as an historical figure. Am I reading you wrong?
April 13th, 2011 | 9:33 pm | #75
Jeff Doles wrote:
‘Any evidence that Jews of the 1st century were accustomed to thinking of Noah in metaphorical, non-historical ways?’
None.
April 13th, 2011 | 9:39 pm | #76
Pastor C.,
David C. says,
‘My response was to say that while I may agree that Noah was an historical figure, the exegetical case is not always so cut and dried. That is to say there are interpretive options he does not seem to want to consider.’
And what are those other interpretive options you wish to put on the table for the reference he cites? Since you brought it up, can you as a pastor explain the exegesis of that reference? Please enlighten us.
April 14th, 2011 | 1:00 am | #77
It seems unlikely that Jesus believed Noah to be a mythical figure. According to the Gospel, Jesus descended from Noah in a traceable lineage. Right after Luke describes the opening of the clouds and the voice in the sky to establish Christ’s divinity, he records Jesus’ human genealogy: “Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, …” (3:23, NIV 2011), tracing back to: “the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, …” (v. 36) It appears that Mary and Joseph taught Jesus from a boy that he was descended from Noah.
But even “if” Noah was real, the question posed in this thread persists in a figure much less certainly historical: Jonah. It was funny to hear a biblical literalist on the radio speak of the repentance of 120,000 in Nineveh as the biggest conversion in biblical history. The literalism is at odds with the character of the book of Jonah as possibly the funniest in the Bible (“not to mention the many cattle”) and clearly unlike other books, where historicity is secondary to the theological point about the expansiveness of God’s mercy even to the enemies of a petulant Israel/Jonah.
Funny, yet our Lord makes deadly serious use of it. The people request a sign. (Of his omniscience?) Instead Jesus says: “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 12:39). A little vague on historicity, perhaps. But what about this: “The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here” (Matthew 12:41) Jesus uses the sign of Jonah to describe his own passion, the sign and sacrament of our salvation: “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40). Did Jesus believe in the literality of Jonah’s journey—or the literary-ity of it? I don’t know. But Carter’s rejected Option 3 does revive. This Lent we can meditate on it and share fish as we prepare for the celebration of the Lord’s passion…and for that meal by the lakeside.
April 14th, 2011 | 4:00 am | #78
The problem here, is the problem of interpreting the Bible literally. The Gospels, cannot be considered, based on sound biblical scholarship, to be verbatim accounts, of Jesus’s words. They’re recreations that, I think scolarship has shown to be congruent with Christian faith, but not recordings, like a tape recorder would do.
Unless one hold the, to my mind, fanciful view that, God used the Gospel authors as puppets, we must conclude that, since the Gospels were written several years after Christ’s life, they’re not verbatim accounts. If they were, how does one explain the differences, in the Gospels? It makes more sense to believe that, the Gospels are historical accounts, not unlike what someone, writing a biography of Ronald Reagan (NOT Morris’s account!), written by an historian, years after Reagan’s death. Would every word be sacrosanct? If the historian was trustworthy, I would probably trust the general account, that he givesm but I would be naive, to assume that this historian, got EVERYTHING right.
Similarly, the Gospel writers, are trustworthy, but being human, and wrting after Jesus’s death, it would be unwarranted, to believe that EVERYTHING they wrote, in these Gospels, was correct.
the belief that Noah, and the account, of the flood, is a literal person, and a literal flood, makes no sense, in the presence of the scientific discoveries, made in the last one hundred and fifty years, or so.
It also makes God, well, not very kind, to be killing off EVERY human, accept for Noah, and his immediate family. And, please, let’s not even go to the absurd, silliness, of getting two of every animal, into the ark, the size of which, is discribed in the bible.
Could it be that, the gospel author, got it wrong, when he wrote that Jesus, referred to Noah? Yes? But is this so bad? Why must be believe in every word, of the Gospels, to beleve in the Christian truth?
We no more need to beleive in the literal truth of the Gospels, to believe in Christ, than to believe in the literal truth, of a history, given by a competent historian, of Ronald Reagan’s life, and work, to believe in Ronald Reagan.
April 14th, 2011 | 8:00 am | #79
Steve,
Apparently I have not made myself clear. (Once again) I am ~not~ in disagreement with Joe over the historicity of Noah and do not wish to argue some other understanding of that particular text. End of story.
My sole point was, and is, that the historic truth value or fact value of a term or personage that Jesus uses is not always to be understood literally. ie — the mustard seed is NOT the smallest of all seeds or as someone else points out, Jonah ~may~ be another case in point.
But, as for an exegetical understanding: it seems to me that whether Noah was a real person is of secondary importance to the intent of Jesus words in Matthew 24. The immediate point of application, and by far the most important, is to warn the disciples of the suddenness and unpredictability of the Parousia. Be prepared, be ready, live as if this was your last day and don’t get get caught up in vain speculation or distracted by the pleasures of this world…..that’s my seat of the pants exegesis of that passage and I would no compunction against teaching it or preaching it just that way without raising the ancillary question of the historicity of Noah.
Let me draw an imperfect analogy. We all know the story of the “boy who cried wolf”. The moral of that story is something like ‘don’t raise false alarms based on your fears because when a real emergency comes,nobody will listen’. I think we can agree that the story makes sense and is ‘true’ and applicable regardless of the ‘historicity’ of the wolf-crying boy. It is a part of our cultural conversation and understanding — a shared cultural knowledge born of story.
Such shared stories form much richer, thicker connections in an oral cultures like that in which Jesus lived. The question of the “truthfulness” (as we moderns would have it) of those stories simply did not have the same value for them as it does for us. It was a secondary question. Notice I say secondary — not irrelevant, but not front and center as it is (often) for us.
In closing let me say that there is a larger point here. The questions that we sometimes get so preoccupied with in our modern rationalist view of the world are not always questions the Bible is particularly interested in answering, and we do violence to the text (and sometimes to one another — at least figuratively) if we insist on making those ‘answers’ central or essential to faith. As I have said elsewhere on this blog, for me the central essential question is not the credibility of Moses or the edibility of Jonah but how each and every one of us answers Jesus’ question “who do you say that I am?”
April 14th, 2011 | 9:35 am | #80
Pastor C.,
David C. said,
‘The questions that we sometimes get so preoccupied with in our modern rationalist view of the world are not always questions the Bible is particularly interested in answering, and we do violence to the text (and sometimes to one another — at least figuratively) if we insist on making those ‘answers’ central or essential to faith. As I have said elsewhere on this blog, for me the central essential question is not the credibility of Moses or the edibility of ‘Jonah but how each and every one of us answers Jesus’ question “who do you say that I am?”’
Yes, that is indeed the central question. Yet I still think as brothers we can present an argument and debate the truth of a matter from what Scripture tells us, without accusing each other of trying to make that argument a limiting factor on who or what is orthodox and who or what isn’t. In other words, you and I can disagree on the age of the earth and whether Noah’s Flood was worldwide and saved only eight (1 Peter 3:20, Gen. 6:17-18, Gen. 9:18-19) or whether it was a local flood, without you suggesting that I’m trying to say you’re not within the bounds of orthodoxy because you don’t believe this, or vice versa. We can still debate, quite passionately, yet in love, asking one another to support our arguments, can we not?
As for the perfect, sinless Christ, God in human flesh, who shared our humanity yet without sin, the words of Christ in Matthew 24:37-39 (referring to Noah, the Ark, the Flood) seem to be referring to a real person in real history, a real event in real history, and a real judgement in real history, and not just some shared cultural knowledge used to make a point. If Christ was sinless, and could not tell a lie, even a little white lie, or shading of the truth, or make up untrue stories, then how would His listeners have perceived these words? ‘Well, Jesus, that never really happened, but I guess we can see your point, although you’re using a story that never really happened, so do I really believe the second coming of the Son of Man in judgment will be as sudden and unexpected as you seem to portray with your story about Noah?’ Or would they, knowing the account of Noah and the Flood recorded in Gen. 6-9, and seen as true history of a true judgment, understand the implications of Christ’s analogy?
April 14th, 2011 | 10:01 am | #81
Brother Bret,
Bret said,
‘The problem here, is the problem of interpreting the Bible literally.’
There is a difference between a ‘wooden literalism’, and understanding the grammatical, contextual, lexicographical clues, and the genre’s of a particular passage in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.
So to say that the problem is interpreting the Bible literally, is simplistic and naive. You can do better, brother.
April 14th, 2011 | 10:47 am | #82
Steve,
You wrote: “I still think as brothers we can present an argument and debate the truth of a matter from what Scripture tells us, without accusing each other of trying to make that argument a limiting factor on who or what is orthodox and who or what isn’t.”
I quite agree and if I have somehow communicated something different, I apologize. My point to Joe Carter was intended to advocate for expansive rather than narrowing possibilities in terms of interpretation and I am still not sure how it could have been taken otherwise….
You further wrote: “We can still debate, quite passionately, yet in love, asking one another to support our arguments, can we not?”
Of course we can, and I believe that is what we’ve done. Ergo, no reason to flog this moribund steed any further. Be well.
April 14th, 2011 | 10:58 am | #83
Wow, it’s hard to get a straight answer sometimes.
It looks like we are about done with this thread (or at least I am). But I still would like to know:
Did Jesus ever learn ANYTHING AT ALL during His life?
Typing “Yes” or “No” surely wouldn’t take that long, would it?
(For context, please see post 64.)
April 14th, 2011 | 11:10 am | #84
That’s a yes for me….
April 14th, 2011 | 11:19 am | #85
@Craig Payne #83
Whether Jesus was able to learn anything probably remains forever shrouded in the contradictory mystery of Jesus being both fully human and fully divine.
KFB
April 14th, 2011 | 11:19 am | #86
Craig,
Yes.
As I have argued before, it seems to me an omniscient person conversing with an ordinary human would know everything the ordinary human was going to say before he or she said. So taking the interchange between Jesus and the Canaanite woman, where he first argues against helping her, and then is impressed by what she says and heals her daughter, he was either playacting, or he didn’t know what she was going to say in advance.
Any time Jesus asks a question (aside from when he is using the Socratic method), presumably he doesn’t know the answer. Otherwise he’s just pretending to have limited knowledge.
April 14th, 2011 | 11:26 am | #87
Brother Craig,
It’s a loaded question. Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”
One wonders what the motivating factors behind your question are.
April 14th, 2011 | 11:51 am | #88
The issue in question is whether, since Jesus appears to assume that Noah was historical, are we required to believe that *Jesus actually thought* Noah was historical? Stated generally, Is every statement, proposition, or implied state of knowledge of Jesus to be taken as a proposition of objective truth?
Take Rev. Saltzman’s post on preaching about demon possession ( http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/04/i-donrsquot-know-what-possessed-me ) .
Jesus clearly acts under the assumption that demon possession is a real phenomenon. The physiological aberration (illness, blindness,…) or human behavior (insanity, seizures) is “caused by a demon,” and casting out the demon alleviates the problem.
Am I required in every case to believe that it was *really* a demon? Or rather, is Jesus acting on the limited neurological/physiological knowledge, acting on what he and everyone around him assumes to be true about “how the world works?”
I have a son with seizures. Prayer has NOT been efficacious in controlling the seizures, medication IS reasonally efficacious. Am I implicitly denying the “truth” of Jesus’ healing praxis–since he would have most certainly attempted to “cast out the demon”?
And if the reader agrees that Jesus’ healing praxis is based on an “as if” state of knowledge–Jesus acts as if certain aberrations of body or psyche are caused by demons, although today we know it is not (always) the case and do not act as if it is the case–than why can we not say the same about Jesus statements about sacred history? In Jesus’ mental world, Noah had existed. Whether Noah “really” existed does not bear on the reality and content of that mental world.
April 14th, 2011 | 11:54 am | #89
Dear Steve Drake:
You are right; it is a fully loaded question. :)
Here, briefly, was my point: If Jesus was able to learn during His human life (since He possessed and possesses a human nature), then He did not know everything (even while He does know everything in His Divinity).
So His reference to Noah, while it is completely able to accomplish what He actually used that reference for, simply means that Jesus knew who Noah was and used that story for an analogy to His first-century situation. It does not prove anything regarding Noah’s historicity.
My secondary point is: So what? Jesus isn’t giving a history lecture.
Finally, I would echo KFB and sign off: “Whether Jesus was able to learn anything probably remains forever shrouded in the contradictory mystery of Jesus being both fully human and fully divine.” May He be glorified by us all.
April 14th, 2011 | 12:21 pm | #90
P.S.
The reality of demon possession is not in dispute. Rather, if every mental state of Jesus is objectively normative, why do WE not act as if Jesus’ assumptions of demon possession are objectively valid assumptions of the nature of the world?
April 14th, 2011 | 1:06 pm | #91
“Did Jesus ever learn ANYTHING AT ALL during His life?”
Yes. Clearly, this is explicitly taught, and implicitly implied by the fact of His infancy.
Here’s a different question: did Jesus ever TEACH people something that He did not in fact have good reason to know? For example, did He teach about heaven and hell without KNOWING about them? (My answer: I don’t believe so, which means that He did at some point gain knowledge about heaven and hell that humans don’t have.)
Did Jesus sometimes teach about things by USING other things that were not literally depicting historical situations? (My answer: of course, as witness parables.)
I see a lot of comments about that seem to assume that there are only two possible extremes: either Jesus knew only what we know and learned it in the same way we do, OR Jesus knew everything by unmediated omniscience. This is simply presumption; there is no reason to suppose that either extreme is true.
-Wm
April 14th, 2011 | 1:22 pm | #92
The presumption of those who question Jesus’ view of Noah is remarkable. It is as if they have become omniscient. Having been an atheist before my conversion, I feel for all who think they really do know the truth. Nothing is more devestating to omniscient doubters than for truth to show up in person which is what happened to me in my days of folly. Imagine saying there is no God, and then to have Jesus show up (in a vision or a hallucination – I cannot tell). It utterly demolishes all your airy speculations and assumptions. Apprehension becomes supreme. You just want to get away, and then you find He comes right along with you and there is no escape. There is that sudden change of mind (did He open the door at which He had knocked?) that leads to salvation…and the joy of which Mr. Lewis spoke. A wonderful joy!
April 14th, 2011 | 1:35 pm | #93
Craig Payne wrote:
I think it matters a lot. Consider the following:
And then consider the words of St. John Chrysostom in his homily on the above verses (Homily XLIII):
Typology is the way in which scripture itself interprets the scriptures. (See 1 Peter 3:20-21; Heb 8:2-5; Heb 9:1-12)
Note that Chrysostom assumes his listeners believe in the historicity of the Book of Jonas to make his point, which is of course, that if the Old Testament type is a historical fact, its New Testament fulfillment can’t be less than a historical fact: “For surely the type is not in truth, and the truth in mere appearance.” How far-fetched is the supposed New Testament fulfillment if its Old Testament type is itself a mere fable? As Chrysostom points out, Christ declares the reality of His eventual resurrection, “confirming it by [the reality of] the type.”
The Church Fathers believed that God really intervened in history, and that the Scriptures, when the genre is historical in nature, is an account of that intervention, whether it be Noah and the flood or Jonah and the whale. Yeah. I know. Modern scholarship scoffs at the notion of the historicity of the Book of Jonah. Yet modern scripture scholarship, after reducing all the types of the Old Testament to fables, is reducing the New Testament fulfillment of those types to fables as well.
The Fathers didn’t make that mistake. If you doubt that, find me a Church Father who does not believe in the historicity of the Book of Jonah. What you will find, if you look into it, is that not only Chrysostom, but Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome and others believed in/defended its historicity. They were scoffed at by their non-believing contemporaries. Unlike modern scripture scholars, they just accepted that. Augustine basically points out, in his defense of the historicity of the Book of Jonah, that those who ridicule Christians about that ought to at least ridicule them about the resurrection instead, which is much more fantastic than God keeping somebody alive in a big fish for a few days.
The faith has always been ridiculed by unbelievers. Modern scripture scholarship, in attempting to avoid being the object of that inevitable scorn, is watering down the faith. What difference does that make? Note that the Fathers, with their humble proclamation of the facts of God’s intervention into human history as recorded in the scriptures, converted the known world. Note also that currently, with more than a billion Christians on the planet (too many of which, thanks to modern scripture scholarship, no longer believe in the historicity of God’s intervention into human history), we are losing ground to secularism.
Craig Payne wrote:
Yes. In His humanity He did or He wouldn’t have been “one tempted in all things like as we are.” In other words, He wouldn’t have been fully human. My point has been that divine knowledge was accessible to Him. How that worked, and how we can be certain when He spoke from His humanity and when He spoke from His divinity remains a mystery. At times it seems clear from which He speaks, as in saying “Only the Father knows” from His humanity and saying “I saw Satan fall from Heaven like lightning” from His divinity.
April 14th, 2011 | 2:09 pm | #94
Hi Craig,
Craig said,
‘So His reference to Noah, while it is completely able to accomplish what He actually used that reference for, simply means that Jesus knew who Noah was and used that story for an analogy to His first-century situation. It does not prove anything regarding Noah’s historicity.’
And this I guess, is where we disagree. I think by reference to Noah, the Ark, the Flood, the judgment the flood accomplished, Jesus solidifies the actual historical event, boat and eight persons described in the account of Gen. 6-9. The same thing can be said in my view of Jesus’ words in Matthew 12 concerning Jonah. A real historical event in real history.
If you want to now then question whether the account of the Flood, Noah, and judgment recorded in Gen. 6-9 is ‘actual’ history, then that is a different question altogether, isn’t it?
So to say that it doesn’t matter whether Jesus’ reference to Noah or Jonah as a historical figure is accurate and merely used the account (story) in analogy, is somewhat of a conjecture. If you don’t believe the Flood account and Noah as real history, then I could see where you would come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter if Noah was historical or not.
But taken the other way, Noah, the Ark, the Flood and subsequent judgment are real historical events, then Jesus’ reference to them in Matthew 24, his reference to Jonah in Matthew 12, carry significantly more weight, more warning, more connection to what will happen in the future as to what actually happened in the past.
April 14th, 2011 | 2:27 pm | #95
Brother Craig,
Harry, quoting Chrysostom, can’t say it any better:
“Note that Chrysostom assumes his listeners believe in the historicity of the Book of Jonas to make his point, which is of course, that if the Old Testament type is a historical fact, its New Testament fulfillment can’t be less than a historical fact: “For surely the type is not in truth, and the truth in mere appearance.” How far-fetched is the supposed New Testament fulfillment if its Old Testament type is itself a mere fable? As Chrysostom points out, Christ declares the reality of His eventual resurrection, “confirming it by [the reality of] the type.”
As to Noah in Matthew 24, Christ declares the reality of his coming in judgment, it’s unexpectedness and His warning to be on the alert, ‘confirming it by [the reality of] the Noachian account’.
April 14th, 2011 | 6:23 pm | #96
Harry, #93: “The Church Fathers believed that God really intervened in history, and that the Scriptures, when the genre is historical in nature, is an account of that intervention, whether it be Noah and the flood or Jonah and the whale. Yeah. I know. Modern scholarship scoffs at the notion of the historicity of the Book of Jonah. Yet modern scripture scholarship, after reducing all the types of the Old Testament to fables, is reducing the New Testament fulfillment of those types to fables as well.
The Fathers didn’t make that mistake. If you doubt that, find me a Church Father who does not believe in the historicity of the Book of Jonah. What you will find, if you look into it, is that not only Chrysostom, but Augustine, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome and others believed in/defended its historicity. They were scoffed at by their non-believing contemporaries. Unlike modern scripture scholars, they just accepted that. Augustine basically points out, in his defense of the historicity of the Book of Jonah, that those who ridicule Christians about that ought to at least ridicule them about the resurrection instead, which is much more fantastic than God keeping somebody alive in a big fish for a few days.”
Superb. It’s an amazing coincidence that you wrote this. Because I have made very similar arguments myself in this post:
Twin Lakes and Inerrancy.
See the whole post and thread. The discussion on Jonah starts at #56, but read particularly #117.
April 14th, 2011 | 9:49 pm | #97
Hello, Truth Unites… and Divides,
I enjoyed your remarks at Twin Lakes and Inerrancy and the article at the link in #117, The Prophecy of Jonah: History or Parable? was great.
Thanks
April 15th, 2011 | 3:36 am | #98
Steve: the question, to be addressed here, is whether Jesus, when he spoke of Noah, thought the latter to be a real person.
This question, presupposes, a particular way, of interpreting the Gospels. Does one consider them to be actual, verbatim accounts, of Jesus’s life, and teachings, or, rather, general historical accounts, not to be taken literally, in every way. If the latter, then one must adopt an intelligent exegesis, of the gospel accounts, that relies on the best of our historical understanding, of the intent of the writers. This position, which I believe is the best one, is not naive; frankly, what IS naive, is to assume that the Gospel accounts, are necessarily, straight from God’s mind, to our our eardrums.
Other commentators, here, have pointed out that, Jesus, as fully human ( also fully God), must have aqcuired his knowledge of reality, the same way the rest of us have.( otherwise, he couldn’t be fully human, right?)
Clearly, the empirical account, of how one obtains knowledge, seems to be superior (at least to my mind) to the rationalist account (but it doesn’t matter, Jesus being fully human, would acquire knowledge the same way anyone else would, whether it’s purely through the senses, the mind, or a combination), in terms of the content, of knowledge. Therefore, Jesus would have to rely, on whatever knowledge sources, were available, to a Jewish person, at this time.
Clearly, there’s no evidence that, the people who lived then, had any sources, OTHER THAN sources that indicated that Noah was a real person (the Torah).
one might say, well, Jesus was “above all of this”. Fine, but how does this do justice to Jesus being FULLY HUMAN? To be FULLY HUMAN, whether we like it, or not, entails being subject to the contingencies, and imperfections, of one’s particular environment.
This is an issue that you need to come to grips with: if Christ is fully human, (as well as fully God), for Him to be fully human, means imperfection. and, an example of the latter, would be, being vulnerable to whatever historical account, is accepted, at the time one lives.
April 15th, 2011 | 3:51 am | #99
Also, I would add, the history of Christianity has plenty of examples, of individuals, and groups, claiming Jesus is more human than God, or more God than human, and the resultant Councils, to deal with these “heresies”.
I could be wrong, but I get the impression that, evangelicals, in general, tend to be inclined toward seeing Christ as more god than human. this propensity, may be manifested, in Mr. Carter, and others, seeming to imply that, if Jesus said something, about Noah, then this proves, once and for all, that Noah really existed.
April 15th, 2011 | 6:07 am | #100
“One wonders what the motivating factors behind your question are”
whenever I hear something like this, why do I always think of Proverbs 6:13? Perhaps because I am uncharitable.
April 15th, 2011 | 8:43 am | #101
Dear Bret,
Being both fully human and fully God does ‘not’ mean He had imperfections if you mean He sinned. Scripture is clear that Christ was sinless. However, I think you want to say that the word ‘imperfections’ means Christ was increasing in wisdom as a child like Luke 2:52 records. But I think you go further than that even, by implying that Christ as an adult was subject to half-truths or false knowledge because of the culture He lived in, subject to ‘untruths’, ‘fables’, ‘cultural myths’, etc. This I cannot abide and is not supported in Scripture.
April 15th, 2011 | 9:38 am | #102
Steve, I understand your concerns. But if Christ is FULLY human, he would have had to obtain His knowledge, form his environment. And since any environment, is composed of imperfect people, with imperfect knowledge, one must conclude that, Jesus had imperfect knowledge, in His human capacity.
When one accepts that, He was/is FULLY God, and FULLY human, at the same time, one enters a world of mystery.
But if one is to claim, as Mr. Carter, and you, and others, seem to be implying that, every statement, Christ is recorded to have said, is infallible, while understandable (after all, if one cannot accept what Christ says, what source can one trust?) two principal problems: it assumes that, the fully God aspect, always supercedes the fully human one, and that the gospels were written, by infallible authors. Certainly, the Gospel writers were human, with all the flaws, the rest of us have. They were reliable historians, but they wrote years, after Christ was here, and even if they wrote words they heard Christ say, presupposes that, their senses and memories are infallible. Human senses, and memories are reliable, but hardly infallible.
April 15th, 2011 | 10:14 am | #103
Dear Bret,
You said,
‘But if Christ is FULLY human, he would have had to obtain His knowledge, form his environment. And since any environment, is composed of imperfect people, with imperfect knowledge, one must conclude that, Jesus had imperfect knowledge, in His human capacity.’
No, I don’t think so. You’re equating being fully human with limited knowledge, something you and I as finite human beings are subject to, but Christ as fully God was not subject to those same limitations. Colossians 2:2-3 says that in Christ are all wisdom and knowledge hidden. Colossians 1:16 says that Christ, ‘by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible,….all things have been created by Him and for Him.
Can you really say that the Creator of the universe had imperfect knowledge?
April 15th, 2011 | 10:28 am | #104
Jeff
We should not presume that whenever a person says something it should taken metaphorically. Rather, we should presume that a person is speaking literally unless there is some reason to suggest metaphor.
OK let’s clean up our language a bit. A metaphor is comparing two things that are clearly different but share some trait (usually in a poetic sense). “Her stare was as cold as ice” is a metaphor.
The example Joe uses is NOT a metaphor. It’s a reference to a mythological story. Saying your bosses inability to accept constructive criticism is his Achilles heel, that’s a metaphor since you’re taking two different things (Achilles’ heel and your bosses weakness) and saying they share something (they were both the single weaknesses that undone an otherwise invincible figures).
Likewise, if you said “I put my iphone on my dresser”….well if you didn’t put your iphone on your dresser you can’t claim to be speaking ‘metaphorically’ unless you quite frankly don’t know what a metaphor is.
If Jesus said something like “the people will be as surprised as Achilles was when he got hit in the heel by the spear”, that would NOT be a metaphor. But most people take references to Greek mythology to be references to fiction. In our day and age, one is not expected to footnote a reference to fictional stories by noting it didn’t literally happen.
I’m not aware of Jesus using any references in the Bible to known mythology. That’s doesn’t ‘prove’ he didn’t in his lifetime. I could see a very good reason to leave out a quote of Jesus using an illustration from, say, Greek or Roman mythology. By putting such a story in the Bible, the impression may be given that Jesus was endorsing the mythology as true which would lead to all types of theological headaches. This would not be a concern in a ‘live speech’ where such a misconception could be countered in real time.
So several really important things leap out here:
1. Referencing ‘non-literal’ things is not in itself a lie. I can talk about, say, Luke Skywalker’s surprise at learning Darth Vader was his father without having to tell anyone its all fiction.
2. While it’s not mentioned directly in the NT, it’s almost certain that Jesus’s audience would be familiar with a wide array of stories. Throughout the OT, there’s a constant back and forth among the Jews over their neighbor’s faiths. Israel was the crossroads of the world then which means that the mythologies of Egypt, Greece and Rome and many others no doubt passed through as traders and merchants moved their goods around. Unlike modern people today, there no doubt were people who believed that some mythologies were literally true. But it’s almost certain that people of Jesus’s time didn’t believe *all* mythologies literally true. For starters, many of those mythologies directly contradicted each other making it impossible to believe they were all fully literally true.
3. Our concept of ‘literally historically true’ is relatively new because we are highly literate and used to tedious scrutiny of historical documents. When people today talk of the distant past ‘literal truth’ is what *we* expect. This probably wasn’t what was expected when ancient people spoke of the past. This is important because Joe hinges his argument on the idea that Jesus’s audience would have expected a literal accounting of what exactly happened in the past when Jesus spoke of the past, therefore if Noah wasn’t ‘literally historical’ then Jesus was either being dishonest or was ignorant. But quite frankly Joe doesn’t know. He is transporting modern sensibilities into the past and assuming that represents what people in the past felt.
#3 is actually snobbishness. We assume that ancient Greeks, for example, wanted a PBS Nova style documentary history of their past but just couldn’t do any better than their mythology. But a more reasonable assumption is that people in the past were no stupider or more gullible than people of the present. By that reasoning I think its reasonable to say many ancient Greeks probably, if you pressed them, would admit that Homer had ‘taken some liberties’ with the Trojan war. The idea that ancient stories, esp. fantastical ones, needed to be taken with a grain of salt was probably not exceptional in ancient times.
Now look at Jesus’s quote again. If it was common, but not universal, to take the more fantastic stories ‘with a grain of salt’ (which is not to say that they were perceived to be ‘lies’), then Jesus quite frankly would have said ‘this literally happened’ if that was highly important to the point he was making. And if you look at the point he’s making, well it’s not important. He is talking about how people were taken by surprise and how they will be taken by surprise in the future. The literal details of how they were surprised in the past aren’t his point and quite frankly it doesn’t matter. Joe and the writer he is responding too are only pretending it matters because if Noah wasn’t literal then Jesus is supposedly being dishonest or is ignorant, neither assumption is necesary though.
April 15th, 2011 | 10:36 am | #105
Hello, Bret Lythgoe,
You wrote:
Jesus seemed to have access to information unavailable to the typical Jewish person:
The above are a few examples among many where the Gospels make clear that Jesus had supernatural knowledge. Having chatted with Moses, He probably knew quite well, for example, whether Moses really authored the Pentateuch. ;o) Actually, He affirms Moses’ authorship of it in John 5:46.
He claimed knowledge of Abraham that only the divine intellect could have. The Jews, realizing that, pressed Him about that claim. He responded in a way that made it so clear that He did indeed possess the divine intellect that the Jews wanted to stone Him.
He was not restricted to “whatever knowledge sources were available to a Jewish person at this time.”
April 15th, 2011 | 10:49 am | #106
Boonton said,
‘Now look at Jesus’s quote again. If it was common, but not universal, to take the more fantastic stories ‘with a grain of salt’ (which is not to say that they were perceived to be ‘lies’), then Jesus quite frankly would have said ‘this literally happened’ if that was highly important to the point he was making.’
Which story are you calling ‘fantastic’, and what leads you to a assume that it was so?
April 15th, 2011 | 11:00 am | #107
Perhaps in the interim, until this question is resolved, we should simply follow Jesus’ example and speak just as matter-of-factly as he did about these events. That idea should not be controversial, should it?
So try it. At the next gathering of your friends, say, “People in today’s world are in for just as big and as terrible a surprise when Jesus comes back as were the people in Noah’s day when the flood came.”
If the fear of embarrassment is your first emotional reaction to this suggestion, you need to check your heart.
April 15th, 2011 | 11:07 am | #108
Good comment Dean from Ohio, but there are a whole host of questions that naturally arise. Whether Jesus is a real historical figure, whether Noah was, and how one relates the one to the other if either is myth. There are plenty of assumptions here to consider, aren’t there?
April 15th, 2011 | 11:16 am | #109
Which story are you calling ‘fantastic’, and what leads you to a assume that it was so?
Namely that all humanity and all life then (and now) living on earth is directly descended from the ark making the story (if you take it literally) essentially a creation story. Now you can relax the world ‘literally’ to mean something like it happened (a man, an ark, even some animals, a massive flood) but not quite the way literalists inside (100% covering of 100% of the world with water, 100% extinction of all species ‘cept those who live in water or were saved).
Put this in contrast with the Trojan War which in itself isn’t at all fantastical, although Homer’s stories of divine intervention, mystical and magical creatures and such are.
Regardless, the presumption here seems to be that skepticism about taking such a story literally is purely a modern type of mindset. That does seem to suffer from assuming ‘we’ are the smart ones and ‘they’ (those from the distant past) were dumb. That’s assumption seems foolish to me. I think a citizen of ancient Israel would be familiar with quite a few mythological stories given the numerous types of people who lived, commanded or traveled through that part of the world. Likewise almost noone could read, write or even if they could they didn’t have books/texts of their own. Most people would know their own ‘cannon’ as verbal stories that would maybe be confirmed by priests who did have access to actual documents. If you were an intelligent person of that age you probably needed to approach the numerous myths with a healthy grain of salt. This doesn’t mean you would have been a Christopher Hitchens or HG Wells living thousands of years before their times, but it does mean that Joe isn’t supporting his contention that no one in Jesus’s audience could have taken his comments about Noah to be ‘non-literal’…or ‘less than fully literal’.
Speaking of which, I’m still waiting on my challenge. Assume the counterfactual, that Jesus was speaking ‘metaphorically’ (even though referencing a story that isn’t literally true is NOT a metaphor), please rewrite the passage so that it would read in that way if that had been the intention?
April 15th, 2011 | 11:29 am | #110
TUAD @ #96,
Great comments in this thread. I was especially fond of your quoting of this quote and highlighting this: “rather, all things being equal, one better imparts a doctrine with real examples than with pretend ones.” Very appropriate to our discussions here.
April 15th, 2011 | 11:33 am | #111
Boonton said,
‘Namely that all humanity and all life then (and now) living on earth is directly descended from the ark making the story (if you take it literally) essentially a creation story. Now you can relax the world ‘literally’ to mean something like it happened (a man, an ark, even some animals, a massive flood) but not quite the way literalists inside (100% covering of 100% of the world with water, 100% extinction of all species ‘cept those who live in water or were saved).’
Ah, yes, well, your presuppositional biases are showing forth, aren’t they? You assume, or presuppose, that the story of the Flood recorded in Holy Scripture in Gen. 6-9 is ‘fantastic’, and then proceed to challenge Christ’s reference in Matthew 24 to this same event as not relevant to the point He is making about His second coming. I can see the logic in this.
April 15th, 2011 | 12:18 pm | #112
Steve,
You seem to equate ‘fantastic’ with ‘false’. The two aren’t the same at all. 9/11 was a fantastic event (meaning dramatic, surprising, a dramatic break from the regular continuioum of events….not ‘wounderfully good’ like a ‘fantastic cake’), but quite literally true. In the Lord of the Rings, the numerous geneologies that Tolkein put in his appendixes were not fantastic events but the fall of Sauron was (despite both being totally fictional).
and then proceed to challenge Christ’s reference in Matthew 24 to this same event as not relevant to the point
Actually I’m just analyzing the logic being employed here. I’m accepting nearly all the assumptions Joe is making…such as the Gospel being accurate. The failure is in the conclusions.
The Bible says nothing about the thoughts or beliefs of Jesus’s audience. The entire assertion that they all took the Noah story literally is what is being made up here without any support. Considering the context of the time, there is if anything better reason to assume that opinion on just how literal the flood was was probably more diverse then than it is now.
The ‘presuppositional biases’ here is that ancient people were niave and childish. The only difference is that Joe takes this as a good thing (since children usually lack the cycnism that comes with adulthood) while the original critic Joe is responding to takes that as a bad thing (as in being gullible).
Again my challenge regarding the nature of the wording still stands. Joe asserts that there’s no ‘signs’ the passage is speaking ‘metaphoricly’, what exactly would be different if the passage was indeed using Noah as a ‘metaphor’ (keeping metaphor in quotes since metaphor does NOT mean ‘not literally true’).
April 15th, 2011 | 12:18 pm | #113
[...] Joe Carter argues against ‘kenotic theology,’ which is the idea I covered last week that Jesus emptied Himself of omniscience when He became flesh. The specific issue arose because of a discussion on whether Noah was a historic person or merely a figure of myth. In defending his position that Noah was a historic person, Carter points to Jesus’ assumption (in Matt 24) that he was. Those who disagreed with Carter used a kenotic explanation, that Jesus was limited to 1st century Palestinian knowledge of history and, thus, was wrong. Incidentally, I disagree with Carter on kenotic theology, but I agree with him about Noah. [...]
April 15th, 2011 | 12:26 pm | #114
Dear Boonton,
So, what exactly is your point? Why do you assume, or presuppose that the account of the Flood in Gen. 6-9 is ‘fantastic’? Or that the 1st Century listeners to Christ’s statement in Matthew 24 would assume metaphor in reference to Noah, the Ark, and the Flood? Do you believe the account of a worldwide Flood that destroyed all save 8 souls, and 2 of every animal, and 7 of those clean, as recorded in Gen. 6-9 or not? Was this a real historical event?
April 15th, 2011 | 12:53 pm | #115
The only way to know whether Jesus really believed in the historicity of the Old Testament figures and events as His remarks often seem to indicate, or if He was just speaking to His audience in terms of what He knew THEY believed, even though those beliefs were historically inaccurate, is to take Christ at His word when He promises the Holy Spirit will guide the Church to the complete truth and be with it forever. (John 14:16; John 16:13)
Christ kept His promises. So, there had to have been a consistent belief regarding these matters that was fashioned by the Holy Spirit over the centuries and remains to this day. This belief should be discernible where there is basic unanimity among the Fathers on the meaning of the scriptures. I don’t think modern scripture scholarship is the place to look for it. I think it has in too many instances, in the last 150 years, contradicted the traditional belief formed by the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of the promises of Christ over the 1850 years that preceded it.
The Fathers believed God really intervened in human history and that the scriptures contain an account of that intervention where the purpose of the narrative is to provide an historical account of that intervention.
April 15th, 2011 | 12:55 pm | #116
Harry said,
‘The Fathers believed God really intervened in human history and that the scriptures contain an account of that intervention where the purpose of the narrative is to provide an historical account of that intervention.’
Beautiful baby. Couldn’t agree more.
April 15th, 2011 | 1:52 pm | #117
Harry said: “Christ kept His promises. So, there had to have been a consistent belief regarding these matters that was fashioned by the Holy Spirit over the centuries and remains to this day. This belief should be discernible where there is basic unanimity among the Fathers on the meaning of the scriptures. I don’t think modern scripture scholarship is the place to look for it. I think it has in too many instances, in the last 150 years, contradicted the traditional belief formed by the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of the promises of Christ over the 1850 years that preceded it.”
Harry’s right.
April 15th, 2011 | 1:52 pm | #118
The Fathers believed God really intervened in human history and that the scriptures contain an account of that intervention where the purpose of the narrative is to provide an historical account of that intervention.
And yet, although the Fathers may have believed the world was created in six 24-hour days, and Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating fruit from a tree, we no longer believe that. We may believe that the accounts that say that tell us something real about God acting in history, but we (Catholics, at least) are not bound to believe the world was created in six days or Adam and Eve ate a piece of forbidden fruit. So what is meant by “historical account” requires some interpretation.
April 15th, 2011 | 1:57 pm | #119
Steve,
1. No assumption is made that the flood was fantastic, it’s the very definition of the word. Only a person who has gorged himself on too much hyped up special effects ridden movies and video games could possibly say it’s not fantastic.
2. For what I hope is the last time metaphor does NOT mean ‘something that didn’t literally happen’. Joe’s use of Achilles as an example of metaphor was an error. Once again a metaphor is comparing two things that are different but share some trait (“her eyes were as cold as ice”). If Noah is as mythical as Achilles and that’s exactly what Jesus knew and believed that wouldn’t make the passage a metaphor. What it is, actually, is an analogy.
What is the difference between an analogy and a metaphor? Usually metaphors contrast things that are very different to make their core idea. Frozen water and a facial expression seem like they have nothing in common but the metaphor works because that makes your mind zero in on the word ‘cold’. Literalness or falseness do not enter into the mix. An analogy compares two things that are actually quite alike to make the mind understand the point. Here the two things are the people who experienced shock at the flood and the shock that people will feel at the coming of the Son of Mon. You charge that I’m somehow challenging Jesus when I say the literalness or not of Noah isn’t the point of the statement…I’m not I’m challenging you…in fact I’m challenging you to read a simple English paragraph as a simple English paragraph.
So let’s assume that Noah was literal, the flood was literal and Jesus believed as such. He could have just as easily used the shock at the Trojan’s upon discovering the giant hoarse wasn’t a gift from the Greeks but a trap as one end of this analogy. Would people have known what he was talking about? I would suspect they would since the story was known to the Greeks and Romans. Would many of them have believed it literally happened? Quite possibly. Did it literally happen like that? Well we know Troy existed and seemed to have been defeated several times but I don’t think the ‘hoarse trick’ would have worked and probably was never literally done. If Jesus had used that to build the analogy would he therefore have been a fool or a liar as Joe asserted? I don’t see how.
April 15th, 2011 | 1:58 pm | #120
David Nickol said,
‘And yet, although the Fathers may have believed the world was created in six 24-hour days, and Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating fruit from a tree, we no longer believe that.’
Who’s the ‘we’ here David? You and how many others?
David said,
‘but we (Catholics, at least) are not bound to believe the world was created in six days or Adam and Eve ate a piece of forbidden fruit.’
I’m not trying to question your allegiance to the Magisterium of the Church here David, but what does the Scripture say? Can you not read it for yourself?
April 15th, 2011 | 2:01 pm | #121
Boonton – If I were to rewrite the Matthew 24 passage as you suggest, I would change one word: “days” would become “story”. Jesus does not refer to the “story” of Noah; he refers to the “days” of Noah. In much the same way, I would not refer to the “days” of Achilles, but the “story” of Achilles.
One thing I would like to add to the conversation: I am not concerned so much with whether or not there are things that Jesus didn’t know, but whether Jesus was ever deceived about anything. The Gospel accounts paint a clear picture of Jesus as someone who discerns the truth: he sees the true meaning of the Scriptures where others do not; he sees right through to the hearts of those would would trap him with their questions; even his own betrayal comes as no surprise to him. This seems devastating to position #4. If anyone is able to discern the literary genre of the flood account, surely it is Jesus.
April 15th, 2011 | 2:04 pm | #122
Dear Boonton,
Boonton said,
’1. No assumption is made that the flood was fantastic, it’s the very definition of the word. Only a person who has gorged himself on too much hyped up special effects ridden movies and video games could possibly say it’s not fantastic.’
So, what is your definition of the word ‘fantastic’? Please explain whether you mean this word to be a referent to ‘mythological’, and ‘untrue’, or ‘incredulous’ but ‘accurate’.
Boonton said,
‘So let’s assume that Noah was literal, the flood was literal and Jesus believed as such.’
What do you believe Boonton? My question to you is still on the table, ‘Was this an historical event as recorded in Gen. 6-9′?
April 15th, 2011 | 2:41 pm | #123
Paul E.
I suppose that works to imply a fiction under the conventions of modern English but it doesn’t quite mean a fiction. We talk about the ‘story of the Titanic’ or the ‘story of the Alamo’ all the time without meaning that these are fictions. “Days of Achilles” doesn’t quite work well in the analogy because….well the only person surprised was probably Achilles when he got hit with that arrow….but I do believe Romans might speak of the ‘the days of Romulus and Reamus(sp)’ when they meant to talk about the founding of Rome rather than the foundational myth of Rome. It may be slightly harder to imagine an English speaker using ‘the days of’ phrase when talking about something he believed to be mythological rather than literal but I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch.
Steve,
See comment #112 where I pointed out that 9/11 can be described as a ‘fantastic event’ even though no one here doubts it happened. Likewise you can have an event that’s quite mythological but very unfantastic. Tolkein’s boring geneologies, for example, are not fantastic despite being fantasy.
In terms of your last question, let me just note that I was thinking about the thing Paul noted earlier…namely “Noah’s Time”. In English the rule is the apostaphe after a proper noun connotes ownership. Paul’s comment means the comment that belongs to Paul. Yet we often use it in terms of ‘Noah’s time’ to simply denote a period. You can say “Ceasar’s time” or “Cleopatra’s time” without anyone telling you that since those years roughly overlap, you’re contradicting yourself and must choose a single ‘time owner’.
Yet suppose 500 years from now we get very caught up with this idea of ownership and the all important apostophe. In that age to say something as simple as “In Sarah Palin’s time…” is to stake out hard ideological ground. The ‘time’ belonged to Sarah Palin and not Obama, McCain, Romney etc. and by saying that you were taking a stance no only to identify your location in history but also whose side you’re on…..a bit like today by choosing to say “Palestinian’s land” or “Israeli’s land” you’re not just donoting which geographical spot you’re talking about but also implying that you’re one one side or another in a hot dispute whether you mean to be or not.
If you got sent to that age by time travel, historians might question you about various things and you might get puzzled as to what the difference is between someone who writes “Obama’s time” and “Beck’s time” and “McCain’s time”. When you figure it out, though, you’d probably have to say something like yes we are speaking the same language more or less but we just didn’t mean things in the way you mean them.
So you’re really asking me two questions. Do I believe the account of the Flood? And do I believe the account means what you mean? Believe it or not (and you probably won’t) I lean towards yes on the first question but a certain no on the second. I think to us ‘the world was destroyed’ means something out of Star Wars with the Death Star firing and the globe blowing up leaving only rock behind. But in an earlier time the world was a much more local concept which means the flood could be true even if it’s also true that as long as humans have been on earth the top of Mt. Everest has never been covered with liquid water. I suppose if we plucked an ancient scribe out of time and questioned him he might roll his eyes and say yes the Death Star was indeed ‘destroying a world’ but they talked about ‘the end of the world’ in other ways.