err.. umm.. ok -- what about it?

Are you saying that to be YEC you must then argue that all church leaders in the dark ages were using perfect exegesis?

We are protestant by affiliation you know.

in Christ,

Bob

Again you argue the point as if exegesis is a subjective undefined term. The whole point of Exegesis and it's rules for context and the authors intent is to eliminate the act of bringing your bias to the text and then "making the text fit".

The point is as glaring as someone who makes up stories about what an antiderivative is used for vs someone who actually engages in integration over an interval.

It is not a matter of subjective "preferences" the term is fully defined and the role of context fully outlined for that concept - the idea of just making it fit whatever you prefer does not apply. It is not as plastic as you have supposed.

Our RC friends constantly complain that exegesis is so illusive that you need a Pope to tell you what to think because the Bible is too plastic. But the facts are quite the opposite. The Bible is very specific and detailed -- the only way the other ideas gain acceptance is by ignoring inconvenient details and then relying on the ignorance of the reader - which is why they restricted access to scripture for so long.

This is why I complained a bit that there needs to be more awarness of this objective method.

in Christ,

Bob

And yet, different exegetes come to different conclusions.

So my Catholic friends kep telling me -- they claim the solution is -- "get a Pope" -- I keep telling THEM - that exegesis is not about "ignoring inconvenient details IN the text" it is about InCLUDING them.

They get stuck on that point.

then I point to Act 17:11 where Non-Christians "study the scriptures daily to SEE IF those things spoken to them by Paul WERE SO" --

this is the very thing that is NOT supposed to be possible in that Bible-is-so-very-plastic model.

But the failure of your own argument in trying to find exegesis for Ex 20:8-11 that would show the Bible could be bent to Darwinism is "instructive" enough for the objective unbiased reader. All translations -- all Bible scholars agree "SIX Days you shall labor...for in SIX DAYS the Lord MADE" is talking about SIX DAYS!

Impossible to ignore. Not the foggy bit of rocket science you had imagined.

Perfect for testing out Exegesis.

in Christ,

Bob

MMhhmm, it's exactly what I thought it was. What it boils down to - what it *always* boils down to - is 'those whose exegesis agrees with mine are absolutely, objectively correct. Those whose doesn't (even if they're using exactly the same methodologies) are either mistaken or lying'. Contrary to your assertion above, I *brought* a different exegesis of those verses, and you rejected it.

As I said -- I get that all the time from my RC friends arguing that "it is all relative" and that we need a pope to decide since exegesis should not be relied on to tell us ONE truth.

And as I said of Act 17:11 regarding even NON-Christians able to "get the point clearly" from Bible study "They studied the scriptures DAILY to SEE IF those things spoken by Paul WERE SO" -- totally disproves that "all is relative" line of argument against exegesis.

Exegesis is basically saying "show your math" -- do the work -- rather than simply hand-waiving and bending the facts to fit some desired solution. But you have to actually practice doing it to appreciate it's value and as I said before -- many people choose to skip that step.

But as it turns out -

1. The Christian church "came about" because Christians were successfull in geting non-Christian Jews and Gentiles to look at the Bible and "do the math" - to see that their own prior-bias was wrong.

2. The Protestant reformation "came about" because Christians were successful in getting fellow non-Protesting Catholics to look at evidence "sola scriptura" and "do the math" to see that their prior-bias and man-made ideas were wrong.

3. The Adventist church "came about" because Christians were able to get fellow non-SDA Christians to evaluate the evidence on doctrine "sola-scriptura" and come to conclusions about errors in prior man-made ideas normally brough to the text in the past.

It is a bit late to start now claiming in effect "it is all relative -- we are all the same -- no idea is more objective than any other when it comes to exegeting scripture"

in Christ,

Bob

There is a large difference between claiming that 'it is all relative' and stating the empirical truth that 'different people using the same methods come to different conclusions'.

Clearly there are conclusions that would be eisegesis. I do believe there are correct answers and correct interpretations, so the relativism argument is a straw man. The point I was making is that there are serious working theologians, using the same methodologies, who do come to different conclusions.

That means that it is possible to be doing good exegetical practice and still end up with different conclusions. The lay person is then left with a dilemma of which conclusions to accept. This is not relativism, this is serious scholarship.

For a very long time serious physicists, doing serious physics, were not sure whether the universe will continue expanding, or whether it will stop expanding and start contracting. Physicists are the least relativistic (pun intended) people in the world, and go for the hard evidence every time... but there were real differences, and more physics needed to be done to resolve them.

As I am sure our RC friends would totally agree.

But as it turns out - we do have Christianity appealing to the same objective verifiable truth of scripture standing in the way of preference. Not simply as evaluated by Christians - but even as evaluated by non-Christians (hence the converts).

We saw it again with the Protestant reformation and then again with the forming of the SDA church -- formed out of the group of non-SDAs who once again were testing that sola-scriptura idea that you do not simply "find whatever you prefer to believe" in scripture.



Agreed. The key is to come up with something that is NOT eisegesis. It is harder than you might think if you have not tried it.



So also do our Catholic friends argue that there is a right interpretation and it is theirs. But they argue that it is too hard for YOU to find without an infallible Pope to guide you.



hmm - we have already been told that about Sabbath, and praying the dead and eternal hell and ...

Well you get the idea.

So nothing new there.




Not so. When those individuals study the point out and then conclude 'well then we were not supposed to be praying to the dead after all" it is typically with a kind of "because as it turns out the Bible speaks in this one way to that subject -- and it can not be turned around".




That is what our Catholic friends keep telling me -- they say I need a Pope to get it right.



Yep - that is what they claim. But in each case I am able to show that the text is far more available and apparent then they would prefer to pretend.

Hence their decision in the dark ages to keep the Bible from the lay person.

in Christ,

Bob

It is not very apparent that they were loudly proclaiming "we do not know if steady state is valid" -- while waiting to come up with the big bang.

Rather we had the same "popularity" voting going on in the form "most cosmologist agree" with only a very small minority holding out.

Then the pendulum changed course - "again".




Agreed - but "physics" is real science so it is free to admit where it has boundaries - flaws that could completely undo the theory.

For example the boundary between Maxwell and Newton - where Newton argues for relative motion - but Maxwell claims that the speed of light is fixed.

Or the boundary between Newtonian physics and special Relativity where - Newton has no place for the earth to orbit a non-existent sun yet special relativity argues that no information can travel faster than the speed of light (no ripple through the space time fabric can travel faster than light) - which would leave us with the earth orbiting a non-existent sun for about 9 minutes.

Or the boundary between general relativity and quantum mechanics where GR views all of space time as a smooth curved survface -- curving along the lines of gravitational force -- while QM sees it all as quantum "Foam" with particles and anti-particles cancelling each other out in frantic activity to obtain "The average" of either a glass of water or empty space -- depending on where you are.

The key in Physics (a "hard science") is to mathematically state each position - define the boundaries -- identify the tests and experiment to show a solution that is "verifiable" not simply "imaginable" as one would be doing in junk-science "stories easy enough to tell but they are not science".

The same is true for chemistry or biology when dealing with observed behavior and properties. But when "imagining that birds came from reptiles" well there you are on your own -- in a world of "Stories easy enough to make up".

in Christ,

Bob

Laying aside the irrelevant Catholic-bashing, your point is *still* that only your exegesis exists and that no other exegesis is possible, despite the empirical evidence that other exegeses exist. Your claim is simply and demonstrably false.