Below I discuss my key takeaways, themes, and ideas drawn from the book.
Dr. Lamoureux’s main thesis is that we must move away from scientific concordism to a spiritual correspondence that can be done while still maintaining both an orthodox belief in Christ and a high respect for scripture as God’s breathed word.
Scientific concordism is the assumption that statements about nature in the Bible align with facts of science (p. 27). Spiritual correspondence is the belief that spiritual statements in Scripture align with spiritual reality… the belief that God personally communicates life-changing spiritual truths to men and women through the Bible. — Lamoureux (p. 28).
In regards to literalism, respecting Scripture and maintaining the belief in its divine inspiration does not necessitate that we interpret everything written as literal. With respect to any work of literature, genre matters. If it were to be true that Genesis 1-11 were written in an ancient style of literature not commonly found today, then it is that ancient style of literature that determines how we should interpret it.
In Genesis 1-3, there is a clear poetic structure to the creation account. The names of Adam and Eve are the Hebrew words for “human” and “life”, Hebrew words and names logically before Hebrew was even invented. Additionally, you have parable-like stories proceeding the creation account until the time of Abraham.
We cannot make Scripture say what we want it to say or twist it to agree with our understanding, this gets into the realm of eisegesis vs exegesis. “Eisegesis refers to reading our own ideas or agendas into a passage or book” (p. 32). Exegesis involves the goal of drawing out the author’s intended meaning from the passage being read.
Figure 21-1. Differences between Genesis 1 & Genesis 2, for reference later (p. 184).
The message-incident principle states that when the Bible refers to nature, God is using the perceptions and knowledge of the day (incident) to deliver a spiritually inerrant message. “[It] states that the ancient science in Scripture is incidental because God’s central purpose in the Bible is to reveal messages of faith, and not scientific facts about his creation” (p. 47). The interpretive key to passages that involve nature and ancient science is to discover what true spiritual message is being delivered through their incidental ancient understanding of reality.
There are five main spiritual truths that all believers have always drawn from the biblical accounts of creation: God created the universe and life, the universe and life are very good, only humans are created in the Image of God, only humans are sinful and God judges humans for their sins — Lamoureux (p. 69).
Essentially, God accommodates his people by talking in their language at their level of understanding. This idea of accommodation is completely biblical. For God (who is divine) to communicate with us (who are not divine), accommodation is already necessary. In addition, God showed he has no problem with accommodation most clearly in the Incarnation and in Jesus’ teachings.[2] Further, we all know accommodation is an effective way to communicate. In Scripture, God never uses a scientific framework outside the cognitive competence of his ancient people.[3] God is not lying or being deceptive, but humbly communicating with his people in a way they will be able to understand his important truths.
The reason statements about nature in Scripture do not align with the physical world is because God allowed the biblical writers to use their ancient understanding of origins in order to communicate spiritual truths. In other words, the Holy Spirit descended to the intellectual level of ancient people during the process of inspiring Scripture. According to this approach, the Bible includes their science-of-the-day, or what could be termed “ancient science”. — Lamoureux (p. 30).
In some of the most interesting parts of the book, Lamoureux includes examples of the ancient science of the day. Throughout Scripture we are told of a 3-tier universe involving 1) a flat circular earth with land, 2) an underworld, and 3) a firmament dividing the heavens (p. 35, 101-136). Lamoureux discusses the ancient science of the day including ancient astronomy informed by their phenomenological perspectives (p. 66, 123-136) and ancient reproductive biology of preformatism and de novo creation informed by their agrarian culture (p. 83, 93). Even Jesus taught using illustrations within the confines of the people’s scientific understanding at that time (eg. grain of wheat, mustard seeds (p. 70)).
See Figure 15-1. The Biblical 3-Tier Universe (p. 109).
See Figure 22-1. Jesus & Ancient Science: Ancient Geography, Astronomy, and Biology of Jesus (p. 188).