- Let's go back the phone lines, talk to Ryan in Alberta, Canada,
CJCA. Hi Ryan!
- Hi Hank, how are you doing?
- Good, how are you?
- Oh, doing pretty good.
Question for you today Hank - after the flood, how did all the different animals
and creatures get to the different continents and islands in the world? Does
the Bible say anything about letters are theories?
- The Bible doesn't say
anything about that whatsoever, and I think that a lot of people get hung up
trying to take the flood account in a way that the Bible doesn't intend it to
be taken. The biblical text is not designed to communicate whether the
flood was global with respect to the earth, or universal with respect to
humanity. That debate is ultimately settled by a proper reading of the book
of nature. So this is not something that we have to grapple with. Maybe people in
the secular community have to grapple with this, but the Christians don't have
to grapple with this issue. Remember civilization was largely
confined to the Fertile Crescent, and so we don't have to automatically presume
that the flood waters covered the entire globe. So why do I say that? Because
there's ample precedent to say that. For example, when the Bible tells us that the
whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his
heart, only the most ardent, fundamentalist reading of the scripture
would suppose that this would include Aborigines from Australia and indigenous
peoples in the Americas. What we can be sure of is that the text of Scripture
both old and new communicates the reality of a great flood in which only a
few people - eight in all - were saved. That we can be sure of the biblical text tells
us that but again we can't know based on the scripture whether the flood was
global with respect to the earth, or universal with respect to
humanity or the human race.
- Okay. So if I were-- I guess part of the reason that I
ask is my brother-in-law, he's very much into into science, and if I were
ever asked the question trying to witness to him, how would I
reconcile that to a way-- that in a way to him that make sense to answer the
question?
- Yeah well say look - I mean he's looking
at exactly the right area of human knowledge to figure out the answer to that
question, which is to say you don't want to look to the Bible to answer this
question because the Bible isn't designed to answer this question any
more than the Bible is designed to answer the question of how old the
universe is. If you want to find out answers to those questions then you have
to find those answers in the realm of the book of knowledge, or excuse
me, not the book of knowledge, but the book of nature. God has placed his
imprimatur on the universe that he created, and we want to look at that
universe for clues as to how these things unfolded. We don't want to look at
the Bible because the Bible isn't designed to answer that question.
God has, again, the book of knowledge which way of communicating the idea of
Scripture, but he also has the book of nature. And the heavens declare the glory
of God - his eternal power, his divine nature, seen through what has been made
so that men are without excuse. So we can look at the universe that God has
created to get answers to questions such as how old is the universe? Was the
flood global with respect to the earth or universal with respect to
humanity? The details are found in the book of nature, and so you start
finding out of you know what are all the different theories that are out there
and which one of those theories corresponds most closely with what we
find in the world itself. I mean this starts with such things
as "is the universe eternal?" Well, we look at the facts, and we find out no, the
facts don't point to an eternal universe, they point to a universe that began at a
point in time. So again, science answers that question
for us, and science comes from the wisdom of those who have committed themselves
to a biblical worldview that says "In the beginning, God."
- Okay. So like two of every
animal - that's not literal - that's-- is that figurative?
- No I'm not suggesting
that the flood account is not a real account that took place; in fact I said
exactly the opposite. Both old and new testament communicate the reality of a
great flood in which only a few - eight in all - were saved. And they were saved
as a result of Noah's Ark, and Noah's Ark is not mythology, Noah's Ark is
something that corresponds to reality. So you can look at flood
accounts that are corrupted, but they are explained by a common
inheritance - to put that another way, they all derive from the same source - an
actual event. And it stands to reason that as the descendants of Noah drifted
from God and from one another, human embellishments and interpretations would
be important in the actual historical event. So if you look at corrupted flood
accounts, well you have unpredictable gods that clutter the text and details
that can be tested an age of scientific enlightenment end up not corresponding
to reality. So in the in the Epic of Gilgamesh
for example, there's a cube-shaped Ark. Well we know that that would not have
been seaworthy. We know that in an age of scientific enlightenment. However if you
test the ark - exactly the dimensions and the
construction of the Ark is precisely what we would predict for something
seaworthy in a great deluge. And so the details with respect to the animals
going on to the arc are given, and there's no reason whatsoever to think
that that's a metaphorical. However having said that I'll go back to my
basic point - the Bible simply does not tell us whether the flood was
global with respect to the earth, or universal with respect to humanity and
the reason that this makes sense is as I said earlier, since civilization
was largely confined to the Fertile Crescent, we don't have to automatically
presume that the flood waters covered the globe.