PROPHECY ARTICLES: End-Time Geophysical Catastrophes pt 1

"Last Generation Forums" :: Prophecy :: Pre-Tribulation Research Center :: End-Time Geophysical Catastrophes pt 1  Author Topic: End-Time Geophysical Catastrophes pt 1 (Read 1 time) Michael James Stone Administrator Site-Administrator member is online   Joined: May 2012 Gender: Male  Posts: 684 End-Time Geophysical Catastrophes pt 1 « Thread Started Today at 3:49pm »    Interpreting Texts on End-Time Geophysical Catastrophes Mr. Charles Clough Interpreting Texts on End-Time Geophysical Catastrophes Charles A. Clough �There will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, no ever shall be. . . .Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not gives its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.� Matthew 24:21,29 [1] �I looked when he opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth. . . .Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place.� Revelation 6:12-14 Introduction. Should we interpret texts that describe cosmic geophysical catastrophes as referring to actual phenomena or as merely figurative language referencing socio-political upheavals?[2] Or, perhaps, should we interpret them as figurative language without an actual historical referent at all but as emotionally stimulating imagery of God�s grandeur in judging mankind? All these options are currently on the table in the evangelical community today. Unfortunately, one cannot delve into the relevant hermeneutical details without immediately becoming entangled in a wide web of background issues. It has become apparent to me in reading the discussions of the last century—both within and without the evangelical community—that background issues are often ignored or uncritically passed over. By background issues I mean reliance upon particular cosmologies, epistemologies, and language theories. I attempt in this paper to explore briefly some figurative interpretation methodology used to interpret language of biblical cosmic catastrophes in cases of liberal and evangelical commentators. I do so from the perspective of their apparent ideological assumptions and conclude that these prior ideologies have one or more problems for understanding the Word of God: (1) unjustified faith in the virtual infallibility of so-called �scientific� cosmologies to replace the prima facie biblical cosmology subverts the ethical core of the biblical story; (2) uncritically accepted Kantian-derived epistemologies are a useless gambit to salvage biblical faith; and (3) usage of recently-articulated notions of community-contextual limits on language without metaphysical correction cannot convey the full scope of special revelation. Finally, I attempt to provide suggestions for a biblically-based hermeneutic of the language of end-time geophysical catastrophes. Liberalism�s figurative language interpretations of cosmic catastrophes As everyone who has taken an Introduction to the Old Testament course knows, the liberal schools of higher criticism have inevitably used a figurative language interpretation technique to explain away textual references to anything contradicting modern scientific cosmology. In their view figures of cosmic upheaval refer to mythical imagination often borrowed by the Israelites from their pagan neighbors. The Bible�s allegedly �mythical� view of nature automatically filtered out by hermeneutics. The pioneer of form criticism, Hermann Gunkel, writing in the nineteenth century after Lyell and Darwin, insisted that the Hebrews borrowed cosmological myth from the Babylonians which they then altered to fit their monotheist vision of the exodus. Passages like Psalm 89:9-11 You rule the raging of the sea� When its wave rise, You still them. You have broken Rahab in pieces, as one who is slain; You have scattered Your enemies with Your mighty arm. The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours; The world and all its fullness, You have founded them. refer to ancient pagan stories of the triumph of creation over chaos (Rahab being a mythical sea monster figure) which the author applies to the exodus event—not to describe an extraordinary event but to depict a mundane one that must be embellished with cosmic imagery.[3] Shailer Matthews, liberal social reformer in the early twentieth century, knew that motivation for social work required the vision of the coming Kingdom of God in the biblical prophetic texts. But having faith in the virtual inerrancy of scientific cosmology he could not bring himself to believe in their historicity. Thus he wrote, �The prophecies of the Old Testament are not highly ingenious puzzles to be worked out—always mistakenly, in charts, diagrams, and �fulfillments.� They are the discovery of [God�s] laws in social evolution. The pictures of the �last things� in the NT are not scientific statements but figures of speech expressing everlasting spiritual realities.�[4] Terence E. Fretheim, recent Old Testament book editor for the Journal of Biblical Literature, comments that the actual exodus event is unknowable and unawesome but becomes so when seen �in greater depth� such as in the poetic song of Exodus 15: �only when one hears the interpretation does one know fully what in fact one has experienced�.[5] Obscure and naturalistic events must be described in glorified language since locally-bound historical and redemptive categories aren�t strong enough to be the stuff for universal theology. And the means of glorification is use of cosmic imagery.[6] For this liberal tradition the cosmic catastrophes that accompany both judgment and the coming new heavens and earth cannot be literal because taken at face value they imply a �mythical� cosmology utterly and hopelessly at odds with the placid naturalism of �scientifically true� cosmology. Proper hermeneutics, therefore, must include a filter that automatically interprets biblical language of physical upheaval as figurative. A critique of the rationale for hermeneutical dependence upon modern cosmology. Thanks to a rising tide of scientifically trained creationists more material exists than ever before concerning the nature of studying the past with scientific methodologies. The well informed exegete today has no excuse for blindly accepting the culture�s evolutionary, naturalistic view of an undisturbed natural environment.  To avoid attributing virtual infallibility to it exegetes need to understand the limitations of the scientific method when applied to discovering past events. Laboratory science is one thing; historical science is quite another (a distinction callously glossed over in modern education). Essential to empirically-based knowledge are observations and measurements. Figure 1 is a �map� of the limitations of observational data. The x-axis depicts time scale rather than linear time, i.e., the farther to the right, the larger the time scale of the data observed. Similarly, the y-axis depicts space-scale rather than linear measurement, i.e., the farther upward, the larger the space scale of the data observed. The inner rectangle pictures what any individual can observe during his or her lifetime without special instrumentation. With such instrumentation, one can observe very fast events (high-speed photography), very small objects (microscopy), and very large objects (telescopy). However, and this is the crucial point, directly trying to observe something over a duration longer than one�s lifespan or longer than record-keeping human history is impossible. If one discards the Bible�s claim of eyewitness observations of the past, one is thereby left to infer what observations of the past might look like. This method of generating surrogate observations has to make conjectures about the physical environment such as the uniformity of so-called natural law throughout all space and time and the cosmological principle that any particular region of the universe looks the same as any other.[7] These extra requirements of historical science distinguish it from laboratory science. One has to reflect critically on attributing the credibility of the latter to the former. Figure 1. Limitations of empirical data. X-axis and Y-axis are time and spatial �size� of data. Instrumentation helps observations of small and large spatial size as well as observations of very brief events (small time �size�), but cannot help observations of events on time scales exceeding that of direct human observation both into the future and into the past. Historical science, therefore, must rely upon non-scientific conjectures concerning the nature of the physical universe. Besides the problem of applying a methodology intended for study of repeatable phenomena to study non-repeatable phenomena, violations of basic logical laws are often overlooked in analysis of empirical data (another feature of scientific investigation casually treated, if at all, in modern education). In logic we observe the statement of inference �if P is true, then Q is true.� This law occurs in all theory testing when P = a [T]heory, and Q = an empirically [O]bserved state-of-affairs. For example, a uniformitarian theory of geophysical processes may imply a certain pattern of igneous and sedimentary rock strata. Common opinion says that if the field data show that such a pattern in fact exists, then the uniformitarian theory must be true. Not so! If the [O]bserved geological state-of-affairs is true, that does not prove that the uniformitarian [T1]heory is true because there could be a catastrophic theory, say T2, such that �if T2 is true, then O is (also) true.� Both these theories imply the same observable situation. Figure 2 presents a case where multiple theories happen to account for some of the same data sets. Here, then, is the problem with common opinion. If there are two or more theories, each of which implies the same state-of-affairs, how do we select the �best� theory? We have now arrived at the nub of present debate between naturalists and supernaturalists. Each school has its own theory-selection criteria that has nothing to do with the empirical data. Harvard population biologist, Richard Lewontin, let the cat out of the bag in his New York Review of Books discussion of Carl Sagan�s last book: Figure 2. Multiple theories can exist to account for given observational data sets (Oa, Ob, Oc). One has to depend upon philosophically informed theory-selection criteria. The data sets themselves cannot help decide in such cases. �Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.�[8] Once the theory-selection criteria and the metaphysical presuppositions of historical science are unearthed, we ought to take to heart the biblical warnings that the theophobia of unbelief (as Paul describes in Romans 1:18ff and as Lewontin exhibits) certainly can have a pervasive and idolatrous intellectual influence. Comparison of modern cosmology with ancient pagan cosmology like that which appears in Enuma Elish reveals remarkable parallels. Both utilize a chain-of-being metaphysic; both extrapolate natural processes to perform magical feats like spontaneous generation of life; both depict a very old universe, and both submerge man under nature.[9] These considerations are no mere intellectual pastimes for the question before us. Three obvious examples come to mind of the impact of cosmology on hermeneutics: (1) how origin of the extra-terrestrial universe impacts the interpretation of Genesis 1, especially the �fourth day puzzle�, as well as all later biblical references to creation from Exodus to Revelation; (2) how the geological history of the earth impacts interpretation of the flood of Genesis 6-8 and all later biblical references to that event; and (3) how the chronology of the second millennium, B.C., impacts interpretation of the exodus and conquest phenomena around which cosmic language is used of the end-time prophecies.[10] Section summary. A hermeneutic for interpreting cosmic catastrophe texts that starts with a denial of the biblical story necessarily must end in denial of the biblical story. And nowhere in that story is there a greater defiance of all speculative cosmology than the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Nowhere can it be clearer that to deny literal language of a biblically-reported physical event is to accuse the prophets and apostles of outright perjury (1 Cor 15:15 cf. John 3:12). Figuratively interpreting what Scripture presents as a literal report, therefore, challenges the ethics of biblical religion and thus its entire edifice.[11] Another consequence: discarding the literalness of events in early Genesis throws away valuable data that could solve the philosophic and linguistic dilemmas plaguing biblical studies.[12] Liberalism�s attempt to salvage theology from figurative language. If liberal higher criticism sawed off the biblical branch that could have provided a cosmological support to orthodox theology, what other support could be found? Can the teleological vision and ethical tenets of the Bible be saved from the damage figurative interpretation does to its historical testimonies? Fortunately for liberalism, the titular Enlightenment thinker Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) came on the scene and seemed to provide a way out of the dilemma. Ever since his day liberal theology has supported itself by using various derivatives of his epistemology. Let�s examine briefly how liberalism has attempted to save the idea of a judging and saving God without affirming his catastrophic intervention into our physical environment. Kant to the rescue. Kant was interested in science and in cosmology in particular. He worked out one of the first modern naturalistic cosmologies, the Nebula Hypothesis. Later, however, he became more and more concerned with preserving a sense of human dignity and moral responsibility against what seemed to be an ever increasing confusion over the place of man in nature. The apparent triggering event in his life was learning about the challenge of empiricist thinking brought by David Hume (1711-1776). Hume raised the question of how we can assume that causality exists in the world when all we have are a finite set of sequential sensations in our mind. Kant�s philosophical response is very intricate but for the purposes of the present discussion it can be summed up in pointing to his separation of all knowledge into two realms. The phenomenal realm is what we experience through sensation. We can�t know about the world as it really is—whether, for example, causality actually exists �out there.� What we know is the organization our minds place on the stream of sensations so that we can live as though causality exists. The real origin of truth, then, for knowing what we perceive is our mind, not the external world of nature itself and not the God of revealed truth. So much for our empirical experiences of history. What about God, ethics, and religion? They are all part of Kant�s second realm of knowledge, the noumenal. That realm is what is �really out there� but not knowable in any empirical way. We only have an inner sense that something must be out there to account for our sensations of it. In Van Til�s careful analysis of Kant he writes: �The field of science seemed to require the idea of necessity while the field of ethics is based upon the notion of freedom. These are exclusive of one another. Yet man is involved in both of them. . . .What Kant is saying is that the scientific principles of necessity are valid. . .but that this validity at the same time implies the limitation of science to the I-it dimension. This validation and limitation of science brings great relief to the modern theologian. He can now commit himself without reserve to the principles of modern science. When he brings the message of Christianity he does not have to enter the realm of science. He does not have to engage in any such debates as have been carried on in the past. . . .It is precisely at this point that we have the origin of much of modern theology. . . .From the Christian point of view we have here the deepest possible rejection of the triune God of Scripture as the self-sufficient subject in relation to whom alone all facts in any realm, lower or higher, have their meaning. In short, in Kant�s position, we have a complete reversal of the covenantal relation in which man, the creature, stands to God. . . .Man instead of God is now the one who ordains its ordinances.�[13] [Emphasis supplied] Kant argued that although man cannot know God as a Person who reveals himself in space-time history, man needs to have the idea of God to provide a basis for the sense of �oughtness.� Kant�s idea of God is an ethical Ideal or a limiting concept that �is the projection of the autonomous man. [It and his idea of moral law] are means by which the free personality is seeking to accomplish its great aim of realizing its own ideal of perfect control over nature and perfect happiness in this perfect control. . . .If Kant�s God is to be spoken of as revealing himself, then it must be added that he reveals only what the free man wants this God to reveal.�[14]  This discussion, like the one preceding, is not an academic parlor game. One logical result of Kant�s influence on the practical level is that the ideal of God from the noumenal realm can only give �a certainty of faith and not of knowledge.�[15] Another result is that figurative language becomes a means of giving an appearance of biblical faith while denying its claims in the phenomenal realm of physical history. Salvaging God�s holiness through figurative interpretation of biblical judgments and deliverances. Liberal exegesis continually imagines that catastrophic language has to be a projection upon biblical history rather than a description of it. For example in his source analysis of OT texts, Gunkel interprets the following text as a Hebrew adaptation of a pagan dragon myth and the source of material later used by Ezekiel: You broke the heads of Leviathan in pieces, And gave him as food to the people in habiting the wilderness. You broke upon the fountain and the flood; You dried up mighty rivers. Psalm 74:14-15 Gunkel here thinks that the author of Psalm 74 utilizes mythical material of a water monster being slain and leaving the fluid over the land as his way of explaining the precipitation cycle! My point here isn�t to resurrect a straw man for criticizing figurative interpretation but to show that Gunkel�s focus isn�t at all on the details of Israel�s history. It�s become an exploration in Hebrew religious imagination unconstrained by any experience of God revealing himself in historical experience. Writing about the same time as Gunkel but considerably more conservative in his theology was Milton S. Terry who is known for his work on hermeneutics. He reacted to the excesses of the biblical criticism of his day which had centered on discovering how biblical texts had come into existence. He wanted to redirect attention back to the message of the resulting canonical text. So he set aside the topics of higher critical investigation for the sake of exegeting the meaning of the texts: �I have in some instances allowed the claims of a radical criticism, which I am personally far from accepting as established, for the very purpose of showing that the great religious lessons of the scripture in question are not affected by critical opinions of the possible �sources,� and date, and authorship, and redaction.�[16] However, in discussing the creation narrative Terry reveals a rejection of more than just source criticism; he follows in the liberal tradition of rejecting biblical cosmology en toto. He writes, �The discoveries of science have effectually exploded the old notion of the creation of earth and heavens in six ordinary days� and �we do not believe that Genesis. . .was given to instruct men in astronomy, or geology, or chemistry. . .�[17] Thus he denies the historical factuality of the events in the Genesis 1-11 in contrast to NT authors who repeatedly refer to these �stories� as historical revelation of the nature of man, sin, and other �great religious lessons.� More directly illustrative for our present purpose is how Terry treats the exodus narrative of the plagues whose imagery �is largely appropriated in the New Testament Apocalypse of John to portray the �terrors and great signs from heaven,� which there figure as trumpets of woe and bowls of wrath.�[18] He discards all discussion of their historicity, preferring to treat such reports of judgment as �the drapery of human conceptions of judgment.�[19] The OT classical prophets� pronouncements of cosmic judgment upon Gentile nations �so far transcended the immediate occasion as to throw the latter [Chaldean desolation] comparatively out of sight. The judgments and the salvation herein conceived seem rather ideal. . . .�[20] Not unexpectedly Terry treats the cosmic catastrophes of the 6th seal in Revelation 6:12-17 in the same manner as he treated the OT judgments with similar imagery, viz., judgment limited to the socio-political sphere exclusive of any cosmic component. The ensuing judgment imagery, he notes, comes mostly from the exodus event. And the final vision in Revelation, the catastrophic creation of the new universe, Terry writes, should not be interpreted �as a literal record of historic events. [The vision elements] are to be recognized as symbolical pictures, designed to indicate the ultimate victory of the Christ. . .It is an ideal picture of what the Messiah is and what he does during the whole period of his reign; not of any one particular event of his coming.�[21] Section summary. We saw above that replacement of biblical cosmology by extra-biblical cosmologies—whether the pagan stories of ancient times or the pagan-like cosmologies of modern times—logically guarantees that every truth connected with the biblical story comes into jeopardy. After uncritically trusting in the virtual infallibility of modern historical science, liberal theologians next uncritically appropriated methodologies derived from Kant�s distinction between the phenomenal realm (historical criticism) and the noumenal realm (limiting concepts of God and moral law). Biblical depictions of history were all problematical—maybe they were true; maybe not. It no longer really mattered as long as the �religious lessons� were extracted from the text.  What went unnoticed, however, was that Kant had replaced God with man. In his view man�s thoughts—including the biblical writers� religious ideas—arise solely from within. Whatever religious lessons that are derived from the biblical stories in a Kantian perspective must be anthropocentrically-derived. Such lessons would then be nothing more than Hebrew autobiography. Though many godly men like Terry tried to hold on to orthodox theology, their theology was limited to sharing what could only now be Hebrew imagination. More consistent liberals went on to apply the Kantian perspective to the epitome of revelation, the incarnate God-Man. The Ideal religious picture of the Christ became separated from the historical Jesus.  The attempt to salvage theology with some sort of Kantian derivative can only generate an assurance of a faith that �somehow� God is behind the biblical stories but hidden. It cannot generate assured knowledge of the God that publicly shares his thoughts with mankind and validates his promises by detectable historical acts.[22] Faith becomes completely subjective ungrounded on any objective authority external to man. Evangelicalism�s use of recent language theory in figurative interpretation of cosmic catastrophe texts. Evangelicals have historically defended the authenticity of the biblical text in the face of liberal abandonment of it. They have been just as diligent to utilize archeological findings in expounding the meaning of it, if not more so, than their liberal counterparts. The crucial difference between the two methodologies centers on where the Scripture intends to be historically true. Liberals can discard historicity wherever it is convenient; evangelicals must adhere to literal interpretation everywhere historicity is expressed. Elsewhere figurative interpretation must be watched for by the careful exegete, especially in poetically-expressed prophetic and so-called apocalyptic literature.[23] While reading the well-written and widely-used text Plowshares & Pruning Hooks: Rethinking the Language of Biblical Prophecy and Apocalyptic,[24] I couldn�t help noticing the many statements about the limitations of language. Since theologians have shown a tendency to imbibe uncritically alien cosmologies and epistemologies over the past century or two, I wondered about the nature of the theories of language now being used in evangelical hermeneutics. My brief comments on contemporary language theory below will be followed by the effect such theory has on special revelation. Figurative Language: Features and Functions. Metaphor�s Three Parts. Central to the use and decoding of figurative language are its features, viz., (1) the figure, (2) the object to which that figure is transferred, and (3) the relationship between them. Metaphorical theory involving these three elements remained pretty much at the level of Aristotle�s Poetics until the 20th century. It has undergone significant development during the past decades. By 1936 I. A. Richards devised an �interaction� theory to understand the third element of metaphor, the relationship. Instead of a mere comparison between the figure and the object, Richards said, �When we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together. . . whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction.�[25] Figurative language challenges the mind to reconcile the conflict brought about by an unexpected juxtaposition of two disparate thoughts. One of its functions, then, is to trigger deeper thought. This is the function that has provoked much of the recent work to explore what such language shows about man�s thought processes. The recognized scope of figurative language has greatly expanded. Early on it was recognized that language is filled with dead metaphors no longer recognized as such (e.g., �leg of a table,� �hood of a car�). Also recognized is the ubiquitous metaphor employed by poets for explanation, emotional impact, and aesthetic dressing. The kind of metaphor, however, that has stimulated the most research is the metaphor necessary to express abstractions and other ideas that cannot be directly experienced. Richards writes: �Language, well-used, does what the intuition of senses cannot do. Words are. . .the occasion and the means of that which is the mind�s endless endeavor to order itself. . ..[Other language theorists] think that the [sensory] image fills in the meaning of the word; it is rather. . .the word which brings in the meaning which the image and its original perception lack.�[26] More recently another rhetorician, Philip Wheelwright has gone further in making knowledge dependent upon language. He says of metaphor, that it �partly creates and partly discloses certain hitherto unknown, unguessed aspects of What Is.�[27] Needless to say, some 20th century poets were quick to see the logical conclusion of such language theory. Wheelwright describes how they created �pure poetry� by composing nonsensical word combinations like �Toasted Susie is my ice cream� hoping �in the broad ontological fact that new qualities and new meanings can emerge. . .out of some hitherto ungrouped combination of elements. . . .As in nature new qualities may be engendered by the coming together of elements in new ways, so too in poetry new suggestions of meaning can be engendered by the juxtaposition of previously unjoined words and images.�[28]   Report to Mod - Link to Post - Back to Top   Logged Quick Reply Message:  Shortcut to Quick Reply box: Alt+Q. Shortcut to post message: Alt+S.

Read more:http://michaeljamesstone.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=pretribulationresearch&thread=674#ixzz1zz4Dd07d