Good question!Philip wrote: ↑Sat May 12, 2018 12:29 pm So, DB - as an enormous amount of study, research and wide-ranging and often contentious opinions have raged over this question, why do you think the text wasn't given in a way so as to have made it crystal clear - to the point the issue would have no reasonable debate? Because there is no way God didn't foresee the modern era of science and that the debate would take up so much time and effort.
Sometimes I think things would be so much simpler if "Sacred Tradition" really was infallible.
However, situations like this remind me that all people are fallible.
Jesus was the only perfect person who ever lived.
Everyone else, including scholars and heroes of the faith that I respect and look up to... and myself as well, is fallible and capable of error.
This means that I need to look to God for ultimate truth, and be like the Bereans who fact-checked even the Apostle Paul of all people to see if what he was teaching lined up with Scripture.
And I do think "the journey" does bring us closer to God and his truth, as we spend time delving into his Word.
Which reminds me of my mother since tomorrow is Mother's Day.
My dad is a brilliant Biblical scholar, but Biblical research, teaching, and preaching is what he "did for a living".
There are two things burned in my brain about my mom:
1. Every year she would read through the Bible in a different translation. Every morning I could count on seeing her reading that day's portion of Scripture in her reading plan.
2. Then there was good old J Vernon McGee and his Through the Bible in Five Years program which was on the radio every day.
My mom showed me what it looks like to love to spend time in God's Word even though it was not part of her professional vocation.
I will never be anywhere close to the Biblical scholar my dad is, and I also fall short of my mom's example of what it looks like in real life to love God's Word.
But I do think my parent's examples have given me the desire to be a Berean, and when I find myself struggling with some of these issues to do my best to search out what God's Word really says.