"Is it Biblical?"

Among Evangelicals, the question "Is it Biblical?" is an oft-used litmus test for whether an individual or community should accept some norm or principle.  For instance, one might ask about the moral permissibility of premarital sex.  The typical response in the Evangelical community would be to ask whether the claim the claim that premarital sex is morally permissible is Biblical.  So what does it mean for any particular claim to be Biblical?

There are three possible relationships between claims that are pertinent here.

First is consistency.  Claim p and claim q are consistent just in case it is possible for both p and q to be true together.  Lots of claims are mutually consistent.  The claim that Syracuse is a city in New York is consistent with the claim that Albany is the capital of New York.  An example of inconsistency would be the following two claims:

James was in Syracuse on February 20, 2015, at 10:07 pm.
James was in Tokyo, Japan on February 20, 2015 at 10:07 pm.

Assuming that it is impossible for the same thing to be in two different places at the same time, these claims are mutually consistent.

Second is implication.  p implies q just in case whenever p is true, q has to be true.  You get this relationship a lot with definitions, as well as with reasoning about categories.  Here's an example of the first.

That James is a bachelor implies that James is a male.

The second claim here follows from what it means to be a bachelor.  If it's true that I'm a bachelor, then it must be true that I'm a male.

Here's another example of implication.

That Fido is a dog implies that Fido is a mammal.

Categories are often nested.  The category of dog is nested in the category of mammal.  So we can infer by implication that anything that is a dog must also be a mammal.

The third is equivalence.  p and q are equivalent just in case whenever p is true, q must be true, and vice versa.  Equivalence is basically like synonymy.  Here's an example of two equivalent claims.

James went to the store today.
It is not true that James didn't go to the store today.

So we have three kinds of relations between claims.  To say that some claim p is Biblical is basically to relate that claim to the set of all of the claims found in the Bible.  But, what sort of relation are we talking about here?  Which one of the above mentioned three is it?

Let's start with equivalence.  It seems clear that p being Biblical is not a case of equivalence.  It's obvious that some claim could be considered Biblical even though it's not equivalent to any particular claim found in the Bible.  For example, most Evangelicals would agree that it's Biblical to go on mission trips to Haiti.  However, the claim that it is good to go to mission trips to Haiti is not equivalent with any claim found in the Bible.

Having set equivalence aside, let's look at the other two relations.

Perhaps to say that p is Biblical is to say that p and the set of claims found in the Bible are related by implication.  There are two possibilities.  Either p implies the Biblical claims, or the Biblical claims imply p.  The first would be no good.  Here's why.  Most Evangelicals believe that all claims found in the Bible are true.  Remember, saying that p implies q is saying that whenever p is true, q must be true.  The only way p would not imply q is if p were true and q were false.  But since claims in the Bible are assumed to be true, p would imply q no matter what.

So, implication probably goes in the other direction.  One interpretation of p being Biblical is that the set of claims in the Bible imply p.  That is, p follows from the claims found in the Bible.  Is this the correct way to interpret p being Biblical?  Notice that this is a strong interpretation.  What I mean is that it's relatively hard for a claim to be implied by Scripture.  Think about it this way.  In order for p to be implied by the Bible, the following has to be true:

(our set of claims found in the Bible)  THEREFORE p.

How many claims is this true of?  Fill in p with anything you'd like:

(set of claims in the Bible) THEREFORE one should go on mission trips to Haiti

Is that really true?  Does it follow from the Bible that one should go on mission trips to Haiti?  If so, how?  It's not as easy as you think to make this connection.

It seems then, that to interpret p being Biblical as an implication relation would eliminate many claims that one might intuitively consider Biblical.

Now let's look at the last relation.  Suppose we consider p being Biblical as a claim about consistency.  So, we interpret p being Biblical as saying that p is consistent with the set of claims found in the Bible.  This just means that p doesn't contradict anything that's said in the Bible.  In this case, the claim that it is good to go on mission trips to Haiti would be Biblical, since that claim is consistent with all of the claims in the Bible.

Notice now that it's really easy for a claim to be Biblical if we understand this to be consistency.  Lots and lots of claims are consistent with the Bible.  In fact, some claims that we would normally think are not Biblical would be considered Biblical under this interpretation.  For instance, the claim, "It is morally permissible to smoke crack cocaine five times a day every day for the rest of your life" is technically consistent with all of the claims found in the Bible.

So, it's not clear whether a claim being Biblical means that it is implied by the Bible or consistent with the Bible.  My suspicion is that a lot of Evangelicals go back and forth between these two interpretations.  If they don't want a claim to be considered Biblical, then they interpret Biblical as implication.  If they want a claim to be considered Biblical, then they take the consistency interpretation.

Evolution and the Christian doctrine of Imago Dei

Aside from exegetical issues surrounding the first few chapters of the book of Genesis, there really doesn't seem to be much conflict between the idea that a divine Creator exists and that life as we know it is the product of an evolutionary process.  It doesn't seem so hard to imagine that God set the initial conditions and started the process off, perhaps making a few tweaks and adjustments along the way.

One area that does seem to create some tension, at least in my mind, is the doctrine of Imago Dei.  This Christian doctrine roughly holds that humankind is made in the image of God.  What does this mean?  Since Christian orthodoxy holds that God is not a physical entity, being made in the image of God can't be interpreted as being made in the physical image of God.  If that's the case, then by "image" we must mean some kind of emotional, intellectual, spiritual, or volitional faculty (or perhaps all of the above).

If it is indeed the case that man is made in the image of God, then this question is put to those (including me) who believe in the truth of evolutionary theory.  According to evolutionary theory, mankind is a descendant of a number of lesser developed species.  If this is so, then at what point was the image of God imparted in man?  Humankind is a descendant of early one celled organisms.  Surely these organisms did not have the image of God.  The same could be said of other species that are part of humankind's evolutionary lineage.  One might point out that the image of God was imparted when the species Homo Erectus evolved to the species Homo Sapiens.  However, this transition was gradual.  Can we point to some exact event where the image of God was imparted?  If so, where and why that event?

For those who interpret the first few chapters of Genesis literally, the answer to this question is simple.  The image of God was imparted on the sixth day of creation when God created humankind from dirt and breathed the breath of life into them (or at least him).  Here there is a specific event that can be pointed to as the event where the image of God was imparted.  Of course, this answer comes at the cost of a highly implausible account of the Earth's origins.

So suppose that you identify as a Christian whose beliefs are more or less orthodox.  Suppose also that you are convinced by the theory of evolution as accurately describing the history of life on Earth.  How do you resolve this apparent tension between science and religion?

Culpability and original sin

So part of the standard story that you get in Christian theology is that everyone is sinful and requires redemption from God.  But why is everyone sinful?

Here are a few ways to answer this question.

Everyone is already sinful at conception, birth, or whenever you have the emergence of a human person.

Everyone will eventually sin at some point in their lives, when they do, they are sinful and need God's redemption.

Let's start with that second answer.  Is it true that EVERYONE will eventually sin?  Is it possible for someone to go their whole life without actually sinning?  It seems that the general consensus answer among theologians is no, although I am not entirely sure.  If the answer is no, then the next question is, "why not?"

One answer is that everyone is born with a defect that will inevitably result in the committing of a sin of some sort.  Okay, so where did this defect come from?

Now we have two choices, either people are sinful, i.e. guilty before God, right from the start, or they have a defect that will inevitably lead to sin.  Either option raises the same basic question: why?

The standard answer is that we inherited this condition from Adam, i.e. the first man and also the first person (along with Eve) to sin against God.  Because of Adam's sin, we are also sinful.  This is puzzling.  Why should I, or anyone else, be held responsible for the acts of one man (and woman)?

Let's suppose that it is indeed the case that I am sinful before God because of the disobedience of Adam.  it seems to follow that I am in some responsible for what he did.  If that is true, then shouldn't it also be true that I am responsible for the acts of my parents, grandparents, and all of my ancestors?  If not, why not?  Why is the case with Adam exceptional?  How is it that the sin of Adam is transmitted through the generations, but no one else's?