6 Comments

David Nickol
August 23rd, 2011 | 10:28 am

It seems to me that viewing Jesus as the “new Adam” is a metaphor that is not invalidated by accepting the figurative nature of the story of Adam and Eve.

Ray Ingles
August 23rd, 2011 | 10:32 am

As Mohler puts it:


The denial of an historical Adam and Eve as the first parents of all humanity and the solitary first human pair severs the link between Adam and Christ which is so crucial to the Gospel.

And since the genomic evidence is so solid, well… that pretty well puts paid to his interpretation of the Bible, young-Earth creationism and all.

…if these arguments hold sway, we will have to come up with an entirely new understanding of the Gospel metanarrative and the Bible’s storyline.

Which, of course, the other theologians he mentioned are working on. Whether they can succeed is a different question.

Michael PS
August 23rd, 2011 | 11:58 am

I find the Foreign Law Bill curious.

Suppose a French citizen, living in France, but holding assets, such as a bank account or securities in the US dies. By what law are the succession rights to those assets to be determined? Will the US courts be debarred from looking at French law to determine who are his heirs?

Or suppose goods shipped by a French seller to an American purchaser aboard a Swedish ship, insured in the UK by Lloyds of London? In the case of a dispute, are the US courts to ignore the laws under which the various contracts were entered into and incorporated into them by reference? Are the New York-Antwerp Rules (to which the US is a party) “foreign law” for this purpose?

Or the rights of two Indian citizens, married in India under the Hindu Marriage Ordinance, but resident in the United States?

In all these cases, the US courts would be creating rights, not enforcing them, by applying their domestic law to rights arising under foreign law..

Some of these cases are governed by the various Hague Conventions on Private International Law, ratified by the United States as international treaties. Others are the subject of customar5y International Law.

Fred
August 23rd, 2011 | 12:22 pm

Looks to me like the Evangelicals are catching up to where Catholics have been for quite a while. And, Ray, the Church has succeeded in the “new understanding” at least to the satisfaction of billions of Catholics, including many people who can hardly be described as ignorant, uneducated, or fanatical (people like the Pope for example.)

harry
August 23rd, 2011 | 1:07 pm

Hi, Ray,

So, that settles it then. Belief in the Bible is doomed. ;o) Not.

Augustine cautioned against taking the creation accounts too literally, so there is not unanimity among the Church Fathers there. For orthodox Catholics, valid exegesis does not contradict what the Fathers unanimously believed to be the correct interpretation of Scripture.

Pius XII made it clear that the first few chapters of Genesis were not to be considered a myth or a legend. He insisted they were in a sense historical, but not in the modern sense:

“… the first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, **do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense**, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes …
If … the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narrations (and this may be conceded), it must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents. Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations have been inserted into the Sacred Scriptures **must in no way be considered on a par with myths or other such things**, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for truth and simplicity which in the Sacred Books, also of the Old Testament, is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers. …”
– Pius XII in Humani Generis

Joe McFaul
August 23rd, 2011 | 3:22 pm

Ray is succinctly sumamrizing Mohler’s argument. The complaints should be directed to Mohler, not Ray.

If Mohler’s biblical exegesis is correct, Christianity is as valid as the Greek gods on Mount Olympus. If it is incorrect, then he should find another line of work. According to Mohler, there is no middle ground. Either way, he should stop what he’s doing.