From http://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/tge/tge03.htm
Religious theory, in inquiring into the creation of man, has pursued the method precisely the reverse of this. Having found man on the earth, it assumes that be was a special creation; that is, that God, having purposed in Himself That He would create man, set Himself about to prepare a place in which he was to live; the earth, formed according to the account in Genesis, being that place. I say that this is the theory of religionists; but it is by no means certain that their account of the creation justifies any such conclusion. The biblical account of the creation is an allegorical picture of it, which, in detail, is strikingly in harmony with the real truth. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void." There were light and darkness--day and night. There were the divisions into water and land; the vegetation, fish, fowl, beast, and man; and next, the rest from labour. In so few words, who could make a clearer statement of what we know about the creation of the earth than this?
We must remember that the Bible does not pretend to be a scientific book at all. It deals altogether with the inspirational or spirit side of the universe. St. Paul informs us that the God of the Bible "is a spirit." At least the translators have made him state it thus; but it is not exactly as he wrote it, although in the end it has the same significance, since if God is a spirit, a spirit is also God. The original Greek of ibis, which is what Paul meant to say, and did say, and which is the truth, religiously and scientifically also, is Pneuma Theos--Pneuma, meaning spirit, and Theos God. According to St. Paul, then, spirit is God, and according to science, the life that is in the world is its creative cause; so both agree in their fundamental propositions, however much the priestcraft of the world may have attempted to twist St. Paul into accordance with their
No comments:
Post a Comment