The Doctrine Of Accommodation
The Doctrine of Accommodation is a doctrine of the Christian church which has been neglected in the past few decades. Accommodation has become increasingly important with the rise of the flat earth movement, radical creationism and KJV onlyism. Accommodation teaches that God, being limitless and eternal, had to condescend to speak with mankind and was taught by church fathers such as Origen and Augustine and was further developed by Erasmus, Luther and others. The doctrine teaches that God uses human language and human writers to communicate his will and plan.
This would seem to be common sense to most Christians, but has become increasingly rejected by fundamentalist protestants, mostly because of their extreme view of the infallibility of scripture. The mainstream view of scripture teaches that the bible is infallible when it comes to salvation and the christian life. This contradicts the fundamentalist teaching that the bible is without error in any error or facet.
Why is this a problem? The old testament, written in an era of scientific ignorance, has repeated references to the ancient near eastern conception of the cosmos and throughout the bible the writers include unscientific claims which we know are wrong today.
Isaiah 40:22 refers to the circle of the earth, notably not a sphere, and Genesis has references to the firmament above the world both of which are consistent with the ancient flat earth model which was standard worldwide before roughly 400 BC. Hebrews 7:4-10 mentions that a descendant of a famous man was in his loins before his was born, a common theory in ancient times but disproven today.
If we take the fundamentalist interpretation method, we have no choice but to be flat earthers and accept whole swathes of scientifically inaccurate propositions.
The other option of course, is the doctrine of accommodation. With the doctrine of accommodation, we can accept that the bible is true when it touches on how we should live, morality and theology, but might be inaccurate in minor scientific matters, then it frees us to spread the kingdom of God and not build giant wooden buildings masquerading as an ark.
This would seem to be common sense to most Christians, but has become increasingly rejected by fundamentalist protestants, mostly because of their extreme view of the infallibility of scripture. The mainstream view of scripture teaches that the bible is infallible when it comes to salvation and the christian life. This contradicts the fundamentalist teaching that the bible is without error in any error or facet.
Why is this a problem? The old testament, written in an era of scientific ignorance, has repeated references to the ancient near eastern conception of the cosmos and throughout the bible the writers include unscientific claims which we know are wrong today.
If we take the fundamentalist interpretation method, we have no choice but to be flat earthers and accept whole swathes of scientifically inaccurate propositions.
The other option of course, is the doctrine of accommodation. With the doctrine of accommodation, we can accept that the bible is true when it touches on how we should live, morality and theology, but might be inaccurate in minor scientific matters, then it frees us to spread the kingdom of God and not build giant wooden buildings masquerading as an ark.
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