May
26
Does the Bible Display Concordance?
This is the second entry in my series citing Rescuing Inerrancy: A Scientific Defense (2023) by Dr. Hugh Ross.
The matter of concordism/concordance between the words of Scripture and what can be seen in nature, and in particular whether or not this is a valid thing to expect or seek, is somewhat controversial even among believing Christians. The subject involves questions of biblical inspiration, inerrancy, and of course the interpretation of both Scripture and the created order. So, it is only fitting that Ross spent some time writing about the topic — which he has touched on in other books, articles, and talks, as well — in this book.
The excerpts below (minus endnotes, as usual) come from the first of four chapters that focus on this topic, though the idea really permeates the whole book. And he ain’t afraid to name names. Here ya go…
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Perhaps you have noticed (in preceding chapters) some reluctance on my part to use the term concordism. Among many twenty-first-century theologians, it carries a negative connotation. Another reason for my hesitancy is that the term concordism can be more confusing than clarifying in that it refers to a wide range of perspectives. So, the term often requires additional clarifying adjectives — scientific, historical, moral, theological, hard, soft, moderate, etc. Concordism, in practice if not in vocabulary, dates back at least to the Middle Ages, when Jewish scholars sought to harmonize the Torah with the science and metaphysics of their era.
However, I first encountered the term in Bernard Ramm’s book, The Christian View of Science and Scripture. Ramm applied it in a positive sense as he described something I had observed before becoming a Christian. In my initial reading of the Bible, it occurred to me, as it did to him, that a day-age understanding of Genesis 1 brought harmony, at least pertaining to timescales, between the biblical creation story and the geological and biological records.
A logically consistent view of biblical inerrancy implies that the three primary spheres of concordance — historical, scientific, and theological — are essentially intertwined. If the Bible is historically concordant, it will also be scientifically and theologically concordant. If the Bible is scientifically concordant, it will also be historically and theologically concordant. If the Bible is theologically concordant, it will also be historically and scientifically concordant.
Although some leaders within the Christian church even prior to the time of Charles Darwin embraced concordance between the Bible and science, in different ways and to different degrees, all held to some level of accord. Christendom’s conservative evangelical branch upheld threefold concordance until the twenty-first century’s Human Genome Project. Within a decade after completion of the project, the leading lights within this branch began to redefine, disregard, or deny concordance altogether.
Denis Lamoureux claims that we must move beyond concordism, “a constraining hermeneutic,” to a “more peaceful and God-honoring relationship” between modern science and our evangelical Christian faith. John Walton and Brent Sandy see concordism, or their preferred term, convergence, as cherry-picking, “seeking statements in the Bible that are compatible with modern science.” Johnny Miller and John Soden define concordism as reading the Bible “as if it is in concord (agreement) with a scientific worldview (emphasis added).” William Lane Craig has declared that a proper interpretation of Genesis 1 “requires shunning concordism.” Craig further comments that concordism is “the attempt to read modern scientific discoveries into biblical texts,” scientific truth that isn’t really there.
Peter Enns, Michael Heiser, Kenton Sparks, and Denis Lamoureux all reject concordance by asserting that the Holy Spirit tolerated the mistaken scientific notions of the biblical authors, permitting such mistakes to remain in Scripture. John Walton, Brent Sandy, Scot McKnight, Johnny Miller, and John Soden express the view that the Bible is virtually devoid of content on science. Walton, for example, states that science is “not capable of exploring a designer or his purposes” or even of “affirming or identifying the role of God.” The grounds on which this rejection rests is essentially the same for all: the false assumption that a historical reading of the original Hebrew text of Genesis 1-2 requires interpreting the creation days as seven 24-hour days. Because such a reading is clearly at odds with well-established measurements of the ages of the universe and Earth, this false assumption compels intellectually honest readers to abandon a concordant interpretation of at least these early chapters of Scripture.
Walton and Enns express further reasons for the abandonment of concordism. Walton considers science “impotent” to address theological issues, based on his belief that “all scientific frameworks are dynamic and subject to change” and “science is in a constant state of flux.” He adds, “The combination of ‘scientific truth’ and ‘divine intention’ is fragile, volatile and methodologically questionable. Enns, meanwhile, regards the “fact” of biological evolution as the crucial “game changer.” He writes, “the Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, has shown beyond any reasonable scientific doubt that humans and primates share common ancestry.” On this basis, he says, we can be sure that “human beings are not the product of a special creation act by God as the Bible says but are the end product of a process of trial-and-error adaptation and natural selection.”
Evidence that a rejection of concordism leads to further doctrinal erosion may be seen in Walton and Sandy’s book, The Lost World of Scripture. There they argue that Old Testament prophetic books should not be interpreted as “future telling.”
They contend that both Isaiah and Daniel were written by multigenerational communities of the prophets’ disciples and that what may appear to be fulfillments of the prophets’ predictions are actually amendments and addenda made by these later followers — after the “predicted” events occurred. Concerning New Testament writers, Walton and Sandy see the fulfillment of prophecy referenced in the apostles’ writings as “not the same thing as the message proclaimed by the prophets.” Most likely, they say, the Old Testament prophets were unaware that they were predicting future events.
The great irony of recent dismissals of concordism — prompted primarily by concerns over apparent contradictions between science and Scripture — lies in their advocacy of a new and more strongly doctrinaire version of concordism. This revised version requires reinterpreting Scripture to fit, or at least to disallow any conflict with, the latest naturalistic models adopted and defended by evolutionary scientists.
According to Genesis 1:28-30, responsibility for “dominion” over the earth, its natural resources and all forms of life, rests with humanity, placed there by the Creator. God tells the first humans to manage everything on Earth for the flourishing of all life, a mandate that essentially requires them to engage in what we now call “science.” Clearly, their assignment calls for ongoing investigation, analysis, and practice, under God’s direction.
The major creation passages in the Bible, especially those in Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, portray God as a rational Being who exquisitely, deliberately, and continually orders the universe for the sake of his plan for humanity. These same biblical texts exhort us to exercise and grow in the virtues of discernment, analysis, reflection, and understanding. Jeremiah 33:25 confirms that the entire universe is governed by laws that remain fixed. In these and other passages, the Bible implies that the pursuit of science will yield knowledge — logical, consistent, trustworthy, valuable truth.
The declaration in Genesis 1:26-27 that humans uniquely reflect God’s image implies, among many things, that we are endowed with the capacity to discover and comprehend to a significant extent the underlying principles, purposes, and characteristics of our intelligible natural realm. Thus, a biblical worldview makes scientific inquiry both possible and desirable.
In ancient cultures that lacked a biblical worldview, science was essentially “stillborn,” to borrow Stanley Jaki’s word. Jaki, a philosopher of science, documents how sparks of scientific endeavor arose in some cultures apart from biblical influence, but these sparks were snuffed out. They could not survive the stifling or distorting effects of such things as cyclical theories of time, polytheism, astrology, and various metaphysical views that either denied or deified nature’s reality.
The Bible has always stood alone in proclaiming the universe to be neither absurd nor magical; an effect, rather than a cause; a realm governed by linear time that points back to a beginning; a comprehensible and logically consistent reality, capable of revealing what’s true. Successful science is possible only within such a worldview, a biblical worldview….
[Note: Although Dr. Ross did not elaborate further, allow me to expand on that last claim just a bit in a way that I think he would agree with: It may seem that non-Christians outnumber Christians in the scientific community these days. But, it is only to the degree that modern scientists — regardless of their personal (anti-)religious views — continue their endeavors with the foundations of the broadly Judeo-Christian worldview framework just described that the scientific community will continue to make significant strides.]
While some theologians may still debate the consistency of the biblical books, evangelical scholars generally do not. When Peter Enns and Kenton Sparks raised concern over what they considered a contradiction between two books of the Bible, other evangelical theologians provided a compelling resolution. Claims of contradiction usually come from reading one or more biblical texts in the worst possible interpretive light. When the biblical writers are granted even a reasonable benefit of the doubt, however, the Bible remains free of contradiction. This is not to say anyone, scholar or otherwise, possesses complete and perfect understanding of every word, but I’m confident in asserting sufficient understanding….
Broad consensus on the internal consistency of Scripture as well as on the noncontradictory relationship between one scientific discipline and another points to a reasonable expectation of consistency, or concordance, between the Bible’s words and nature’s record.
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I think Ross makes some good observations and a great case for his position and against that which decries any attempt at recognizing concordance — scientific, historical, theological — in the biblical record, especially when couple with what I presented in “The Doctrines of Biblical Inerrancy and Dual Revelation Are Nothing New”. What do you think?
