Reconciling science with scripture is a good thing. I’m stating the obvious here because some Christians—quite a few actually, suggest, albeit often through the technique of passive aggressiveness, that it is not good, not good at all. As if you were being disrespectful to God and/or allowing humanism to trump the faith or at least trump scripture. In fact, those who look down upon efforts at concordance are at risk of relegating general revelation to the status of a second-class citizen and in elevating their ability to exegete into realm of infallibility. General and special relativity should be treated on equal terms, as scripture itself reminds us.
Counterintuitively, the easiest events to reconcile are miracles, because they don’t need to be reconciled. By their very definition they cannot be reconciled—a miracle is a violation of the natural laws. One of the most bizarre activities ever attempted is when believers try to explain miracles through science, as in “the parting of the sea was due to a fortuitous gale force wind in concert with an equally fortuitous temblor and everyone in Asia jumping up and down at the same time during a full moon.”
I’ve never really had much trouble reconciling science and scripture. Oh, for a while I struggled to make the order of created things in Genesis align with the order we see from science, in order to affirm the day-age interpretation, but after a while I decided I really can’t make that work. So, recognizing that both science and exegesis are fallible, I did what I had to do, I abandoned one, in this case it was the day-age view. I went on to adopt the Framework hypothesis.
All is good. Ducks in a row.
Except for the blasted rainbows. I don’t know what to do with rainbows.
We “know” their origin. A covenantal sign that a flood will never again be used to wipe out all of humanity. We read in Genesis, chapter the ninth:
11 I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” 12 And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. (Gen 9:11-15)
The plain reading, and the way I believe most people interpret this passage, is that rainbows did not exist prior to God’s invoking of his decretive will following the (local) flood.
But this is not like any of the miracles—those are isolated events, not repetitive. An analogy would be that once Jesus fed the multitudes, feeding a small town with a single Chick-fil-A sandwich and having some strips left over for tomorrow became commonplace. And besides, we know exactly how rainbows develop, it’s simple first year physics. If there were no rainbows before, then the physics was different before, and the change stuck. But the physics could not have been very different before—that would have left a mark that we’d detect today.
The advent of rainbows, if that’s what it was, is unlike anything else in scripture.
I would like to interpret Genesis 9 along the lines of God decreed the mother of all rainbows, in magnitude and brilliance far greater than the ordinary, perhaps in a clear blue sky, to Noah and his offspring, when he made the covenant. And that super-duper rainbow was the supernatural sign. But the text doesn’t really support that, not without excessive exegetical gymnastics.
I think I’ll go to the grave not getting my head wrapped around Genesis 9. But that’s okay, given that I do have a good feel for John 3. Priorities.
Good priority.
ReplyDeleteSee my blog post on whether it rained before the Flood: https://sunandshield.blogspot.com/2009/11/did-it-rain-before-flood.html
Martin, thanks for that link! Loved it.
DeleteThank you for reading it.
ReplyDeleteI'm four months late on this, but it might help. Years ago, someone, I forget who, I think it might have been Hugh Ross, made the point that there really isn't any need to read this as God having created the first rainbow here. There is a pattern throughout scripture of God, whenever He makes a covenant with someone or some people, taking an already existing thing, and either repurposing it, or using it as a sign of that covenant, circumcision, for instance. Circumcision wasn't invented in Genesis 17, it was already around. But it was from that point on used as a sign to look back on and remember the covenant between Abraham, his people, and God. In the same way, there's no reason that rainbows wouldn't have been around, and God used them to say, "remember those things that are around after a rain, and remember that I use that as a sign to remind you of my covenant not to again lay this devastation on the earth." I don't think that's really stretching the text. If you want another natural phenomenon an analogy rather than a manmade custom like circumcision, it's often pointed out by people who argue for Old Earth against the no death at all before the fall position, that when God said to Adam, "in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die", that Adam would have had to know what death was in order for the warning to make sense to him. So, it was around, but now took on a new meaning. The rainbow was seen before, but now would have a new meaning of God's promise every time it was seen after a storm, no matter how heavy. I'm a person who grimaces when I see slipshod harmonization, and I really don't think that that's stretching the text very far, or really at all. It actually does make perfect natural sense to me. God throughout scripture really does repurpose things as signs between Him and His people, and unless there's some Hebrew language thing that I'm missing, I don't see this as needing the be read as the first rainbow.
ReplyDeleteJames, thanks for the thoughtful comment.
DeleteDavid