Why is it that biblical literalists have a hard time understanding the legitimacy the clear data that science gives us about the world and at the same time confuse faith with the kind of knowledge that science produces? Too often we just write this perspective off as stupid, ignorant or delusional and move on with our lives. But there is something deeper occurring here.
The problem begins with a hermeneutic of the text that ascribes the contingent reality of the text to the non-contingent reality of God. The text therefore becomes God or at least "like" God and therefore equates those who believe it with God. That is to say, if I have faith in the text in a very specific sense, then I share the mind of God. You cannot modify faith at this point because you have legitimated it based on its non-contingent character. With faith legitimated this way, all other sources that would challenge its assumed non-contingent character (namely, scientific knowledge or alternative hermeneutics and reasoning strategies) are henceforth de-legitimated as sources of knowledge.
With this operative in the background faith becomes fact and science becomes faith. Then following, the same source of now de-legitimated scientific knowledge is then applied to the object of faith which is now hard fact – we have certainties about God because we have certainties about the Bible. These are certain because the Bible and those who practice faith in it is proof enough to substantiate the assertion. The problem is that the source of substantiation in this case is a way of knowing, science, that has already been de-legitimated. So the whole thing makes absolutely no sense.
No related posts.
