In the age of YouTube, you never know who’s listening in. You may be speaking to the audience in front of you, you may be speaking to a small group, but there’s an unseen audience behind the camera. Many eyes and ears outside the auditorium are overhearing your every word.
There’s a little YouTube clip of Tremper Longman which is making the rounds of the Internet. For now I’ll comment on a few things which Jeremy Pierce has said in response to some of Longman’s critics:
Longman has denies neither plenary inspiration of scripture nor inerrancy. What he has done is deny a view that many people here take to be implied by (a) inerrancy or the plenary inspiration of scripture together with (b) a certain view of what Genesis 1 and/or other texts of scripture, when interpreted correctly, actually teach.
If Longman is incorrect about the matters (b) describes, then his view is compatible with inerrancy but incompatible with the correct interpretation of scripture.
It’s true that there are various situations in which you can distinguish between a true statement and a true (or false) interpretation of a true statement. But as a general proposition, that distinction is far too facile.
Take Jim and Tim Baker. Jim and Tim are identical twins. Jim is a militant atheist while his brother Tim is a “conservative evangelical.”
Jim thinks the story of Abraham is false. God never called Abraham out of Ur. That’s a historical error.
By contrast, Tim thinks the story of Abraham is metaphorical. God never called Abraham out of Ur. Rather, it’s a metaphor for the cost of discipleship. The story is true at a parabolic level. It’s not a question of whether the Bible is true or false, but whether our interpretations are true or false.
Jim thinks the story of the Exodus is false. That never happened. That’s a historical error.
By contrast, Tim thinks the story of the Exodus is metaphorical. It never happened, in the “overly literalistic” sense of the word. But it symbolizes our deliverance from sin.
Jim thinks the story of the manna in the wilderness is false. God never fed manna to the Israelites. That’s a historical error.
By contrast, Tim thinks the story of the manna is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the story of the miracle at Cana is false while Tim thinks the same story is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the story of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness is false while Tim thinks the same story is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the feeding of the five thousand is false while Tim thinks the same account is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the Crucifixion is false while Tim thinks the Crucifixion is metaphorical.
Jim thinks the Resurrection is false while Tim thinks the Resurrection is metaphorical.
Every reported event which Jim says never happened, Tim says never happened. Every Biblical figure which Jim says never existed, Tim says never existed.
Ah, but there’s a world of difference, right? For Jim, that’s a factual question, but for his brother, that’s a hermeneutical question.
In principle, you could maintain this theoretical distinction every step of the way, but by the same token, what’s the practical difference? What Tim the “conservative evangelical” believes has exactly the same exchange rate as what Jim the militant atheist believes. The two positions are functionally indistinguishable. The "believer" becomes the mirror-image of the unbeliever.
I get the sense from his language that he's more interested in recognizing that people can accept inerrancy and accept the conclusion of the consensus of science than he is at arguing that we ought to take any particular view of how to interpret Genesis 1.
i) That strikes me as incoherent. If we assume that a scientific theory like macroevolution is true, and if the question at issue is how a Bible story relates to scientific truth, then it’s not just a hermeneutical question, but a factual question. Is the Bible true–taking the scientific theory as the frame of reference? So that’s not just a question of how you interpret the story. That also goes to the truth or falsity of the story.
If the evolutionary theory of human origins is true, then can the Biblical account of human origins also be true in the same sense?
So I don’t see, as Pierce frames the issue, that inerrancy and hermeneutics occupy airtight compartments.
ii) In addition, what about the hermeneutical question? Suppose Longman doesn’t believe that Gen 2-3 is literally true because he thinks that’s unscientific. So his objection to the literal truth of Gen 2-3 is a scientific objection.
However, Longman is an OT scholar who employs the grammatico-historical method. Even if modern science is an impediment to his own belief in the literal truth of Gen 2-3, that was no impediment to the author of Genesis or his target audience.
So shouldn’t he start by asking what it would be to them, rather than what it could mean to him? Isn’t the grammatico-historical method like a time-machine in which we try to leave our cultural filters behind us (as best we can) and reenter the mental world of the author or his target audience? Ask ourselves how they would have viewed the story?
If we do compartmentalize the factual question from the hermeneutical question, then we can’t allow the factual question (as defined by modern science) to infect the answer to the hermeneutical question.
So it seems to me that Pierce is oscillating between to contradictory approaches. Do we treat these as distinct domains, or does one inform the other?
There are ways to fit the non-individual approach to Adam to the other texts people are citing. It does mean a somewhat unnatural reading of a few statements (such as Paul's comparison of the one man Adam and the one man Jesus), but it's possible to take those statements as true while not referring to an actual one man Adam but to the one man Adam in the Genesis account. I don't think this is the most natural way to take either the Genesis narratives or Paul's statement, but it's possible to take the Genesis narratives as true in the sense parables are true and Paul's statement as true in the same sense that it's true that the Good Samaritan helped the man that other passersby ignored. It's true that the Good Samaritan did this. It's just truth within a story. The character in Jesus' parable did that. It's just that he was telling a parable and not implying the existence of a real person who did what the Good Samaritan did.
i) Suppose, for the sake of argument, that there are logically consistent ways to “fit the non-individual approach to Adam” to other Biblical texts.
Once again, though, if we’re going to cast the issue in hermeneutical terms, then what is logically consistent is hardly a sufficient hermeneutical condition.
A ufological interpretation of Ezk 1 might be logically consistent. But is that what the prophet thought he say? Is that what he meant to convey to his audience?
When we interpret Rom 5 or 1 Cor 15, is Pauline intent irrelevant to the correct interpretation? Is it sufficient to construe the text in a way that makes all the moving parts fit? Or do we need to take into consideration what Paul thought he was teaching?
ii) Apropos (i), for Paul, Gen 1-3 isn’t just true “within the story.” Rather, he thinks that he and his readers are part of the same story. We, too, are “characters” within the same continuous, unfolding narrative. The story has a real world referent.
Someone could take Genesis' early chapters in a similar way, teaching about how we are all fallen and how we all do what Adam and Eve did, thus in NT terms taking there to be an explanation of why there's a need for a savior, without believing there was a real individual person whom the Bible calls Adam and a real individual person whom the Bible calls Eve.
The problem with that explanation is that Genesis and other Biblical passages aren’t merely citing the case of Adam and Eve to illustrate an abstract truth, the way a fictitious character can illustrate an abstract truth. They are more than illustrations. What Adam and Eve are said to have done is treated as a precondition of subsequent events.
If the Good Samaritan did not exist, the truth which his character illustrates would still be true. But if Adam and Eve did not exist, then the effect of their actions would not occur.
Adam and Eve do more than illustrate an abstract truth: they function as truthmakers.